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The Ideal Life 



THE 

IDEAL LIFE 

Addresses Hitherto Unpublished 
HENRY DRUMMOND 

With Memorial Sketches by 
IAN MACLAREN 

AND 

W. ROBERTSON NICOLL 



I 



New York 

Dodd, Mead and Company 
1898 















•37 



Copyright, 1897, 
By the North American Review Publishing Company. 

Copyright, 1897, 
By Dodd, Mead and Company. 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



Contents 



Pack 

Introduction. I i 

Introduction. II 24 

Number 

I. Ill-Temper 47 

II. Why Christ must depart 65 

III. Going to the Father 81 

IV. The Eccentricity of Religion .... 96 
V. "To me to live is Christ" 112 

VI. Clairvoyance 132 

VII. The Three Facts of Sin 149 

VIII. The Three Facts of Salvation . . . 170 

IX. "What is your Life?" .190 

X. Marvel not 212 

XI. The Man after God's own Heart . . 227 

XII. Penitence 244 

XIII. What is God's Will ? 261 

XIV. The Relation of the Will of God to 

Sanctification 283 

XV. How to know the Will of God . . . 302 



Introduction 



PROFESSOR DRUMMOND'S influence on 
his contemporaries is not to be meas- 
ured by the sale of his books, great as that has 
been. It may be doubted whether any living 
novelist has had so many readers, and perhaps 
no living writer has been so eagerly followed 
and so keenly discussed on the Continent and in 
America. For some reason, which it is diffi- 
cult to assign, many who exercise great influ- 
ence at home are not appreciated elsewhere. It 
has been said, for example, that no book of 
Ruskin's has ever been translated into a Con- 
tinental language, and though such a negative 
is obviously dangerous, it is true that Ruskin 
has not been to Europe what he has been to 
England. But Professor Drummond had the 
widest vogue from Norway to Germany. There 
was a time when scarcely a week passed in Ger- 
many without the publication of a book or pam- 
phlet in which his views were canvassed. In 
Scandinavia, perhaps, no other living English- 
man was so widely known. In every part of 



2 INTRODUCTION 

America his books had an extraordinary circu- 
lation. This influence reached all classes. It 
was strong among scientific men, whatever may 
be said to the contrary. Among such men as 
Von Moltke, Mr. Arthur Balfour, and others 
belonging to the governing class, it was stronger 
still. It penetrated to every section of the Chris- 
tian Church, and far beyond these limits. Still, 
when this is said, it remains true that his 
deepest influence was personal and hidden. In 
the long series of addresses he delivered all over 
the world he brought about what may at least 
be called a crisis in the lives of innumerable 
hearers. He received, I venture to say, more 
of the confidences of people untouched by the 
ordinary work of the Church than any other man 
of his time. Men and women came to him in 
their deepest and bitterest perplexities. To 
such he was accessible, and both by personal 
interviews and by correspondence, gave such 
help as he could. He was an ideal confessor. 
No story of failure daunted or surprised him. 
For every one he had a message of hope; and, 
while the warm friend of a chosen circle and 
acutely responsive to their kindness, he did not 
seem to lean upon his friends. He himself did 
not ask for sympathy, and did not seem to need 
it. The innermost secrets of his life were be- 
tween himself and his Saviour. While frank 
and at times even communicative, he had noth- 
ing to say about himself or about those who had 



INTRODUCTION 3 

trusted him. There are multitudes who owed 
to Henry Drummond all that one man can owe 
to another, and who felt such a thrill pass 
through them at the news of his death as they 
can never experience again. 

Henry Drummond was born at Stirling in 
185 1. He was surrounded from the first by 
powerful religious influences of the evangelistic 
kind. His uncle, Mr. Peter Drummond, was 
the founder of what is known as the Stirling 
Tract enterprise, through which many millions 
of small religious publications have been cir- 
culated through the world. As a child he was 
remarkable for his sunny disposition and his 
sweet temper, while the religiousness of his 
nature made itself manifest at an early period. 
I do not gather, however, that there were many 
auguries of his future distinction. He was 
thought to be somewhat desultory and indepen- 
dent in his work. In due course he proceeded 
to the University of Edinburgh, where he dis- 
tinguished himself in science, but in nothing 
else. He gained, I believe, the medal in the 
geology class. But like many students who do 
not go in for honours, he was anything but idle. 
He tells us himself that he began to form a 
library, his first purchase being a volume of 
extracts from Ruskin's works. Ruskin taught 
him to see the world as it is, and it soon became 
a new world to him, full of charm and loveli- 
ness. He learned to linger beside the ploughed 



4 INTRODUCTION 

field, and revel in the affluence of colour and 
shade which were to be seen in the newly-turned 
furrows, and to gaze in wonder at the liquid 
amber of the two feet of air above the brown 
earth. Next to Ruskin he put Emerson, who 
all his life powerfully affected both his teaching 
and his style. Differing as they did in many 
ways, they were alike in being optimists with 
a high and noble conception of good, but with 
no correspondingly definite conception of evil. 
Mr. Henry James says that Emerson's genius 
had a singular thinness, an almost touching 
lightness, sparseness, and transparency about it. 
And the same was true, in a measure, of Drum- 
mond's. The religious writers who attracted 
him were Channing and F. W. Robertson. 
Channing taught him to believe in God, the 
good and gracious Sovereign of all things. 
From Robertson he learned that God is human, 
and that we may have fellowship with Him be- 
cause He sympathises with us. It is well known 
that Robertson himself was a warm admirer of 
Channing. The parallels between Robertson 
and Channing in thought, and even in words, 
have never been properly drawn out. It would 
be a gross, exaggeration to say that the contact 
with Robertson and Channing was the begin- 
ning of Drummond's religious life. But it was 
through them, and it was at that period of his 
studentship that he began to take possession for 
himself of Christian truth. And it was a great 



INTRODUCTION 5 

secret of his power that he preached nothing 
except what had personally come home to him 
and had entered into his heart of hearts. His 
attitude to much of the theology in which he 
was taught was that not of denial, but of respect- 
ful distance. He might have come later on to 
appropriate it and preach it, but the appropria- 
tion would have been the condition of the preach- 
ing. His mind was always receptive. Like 
Emerson, he was an excellent listener. He 
stood always in a position of hopeful expectancy, 
and regarded each delivery of a personal view as 
a new fact to be estimated on its merits. I may 
add that he was a warm admirer of Mr. R. H. 
Hutton, and thought his essay on Goethe the 
best critical piece of the century. He used to 
say that, like Mr. Hutton, he could sympathise 
with every Church but the Hard Church. 

After completing his University course he 
went to the New College, Edinburgh, to be 
trained for the ministry of the Free Church. 
The time was critical. The Free Church had 
been founded in a time of intense Evangelical 
faith and passion. It was a visible sign of the 
reaction against Moderatism. The Moderates 
had done great service to literature, but their 
sermons were favourably represented by the 
solemn fudge of Blair. James Macdonell, the 
brilliant Times leader-writer, who carefully ob- 
served from the position of an outsider the eccle- 
siastical life of his countrymen, said that the 



6 INTRODUCTION 

Moderate leaders deliberately set themselves to 
the task of stripping Scotch Presbyterian ism 
free from provincialism, and so triumphant were 
they that most of their sermons might have 
been preached in a heathen temple as fitly as 
in St Giles. They taught the moral law with 
politeness ; they made philosophy the handmaid 
of Christianity with well-bred moderation, and 
they so handled the grimmer tenets of Calvinism 
as to hurt no susceptibilities. The storm of the 
Disruption blew away the old Moderates from 
their place of power, and men like Chalmers, 
Cunningham, Candlish, Welsh, Guthrie, Begg, 
and the other leaders of the Evangelicals, more 
than filled their place. The obvious danger 
was that the Free Church should become the 
home of bigotry and obscurantism. This danger 
was not so great at first. There was a lull in 
critical and theological discussion, and men were 
sure of their ground. The large and generous 
spirit of Chalmers impressed itself on the Church 
of which he was the main founder, and the desire 
to assert the influence of religion in science and 
literature in all the field of knowledge was shown 
from the beginning. For example, the North 
British Review was the organ of the Free Church, 
and did not stand much behind the Edinburgh 
and the Quarterly, either in the ability of its 
articles or in the distinction of many of its 
contributors. But especially the Free Church 
showed its wisdom by founding theological sem- 



INTRODUCTION 7 

inaries, and filling their chairs with its best 
men. A Professorship of Divinity was held to 
be a higher position than the pastorate of any 
pulpit As time went on, however, and as the 
tenets of the Westminster Evangelicanism were 
more and more formidably assailed, the Free 
Church came in danger of surrendering its intel- 
lectual life. The whisper of heresy would have 
damaged a minister as effectually as a grave 
moral charge. Independent thought was impa- 
tiently and angrily suppressed. Macdonell said, 
writing in the Spectator in 1874, that the Free 
Church was being intellectually starved, and he 
pointed out that the Established Church was 
gaining ground under the leadership of such 
men as Principal Tulloch and Dr. Wallace, who 
in a sense represented the old Moderates, though 
they were as different from them as this age is 
from the last. The Free Church was apparently 
refusing to shape the dogmas of traditional 
Christianity in such a way as to meet the subtle 
intellectual and moral demands of an essentially 
scientific age. There was an apparent unanimity 
in the Free Church, but it was much more 
apparent than real. For one thing, the teach- 
ing of some of the professors had been produc- 
ing its influence. Dr. A. B. Davidson, the 
recognised master of Old Testament learning 
in this country, a man who joins to his know- 
ledge imagination, subtlety, fervour, and a rare 
power of style, had been quietly teaching the 



8 INTRODUCTION 

best men amongst his students that the old 
views of revelation would have to be seriously 
altered. He did not do this so much directly as 
indirectly, and I think there was a period when 
any Free Church minister who asserted the ex- 
istence of errors in the Bible would have been 
summarily deposed. The abler students had 
been taking sessions at Germany, and had thus 
escaped from the narrowness of the provincial 
coterie. They were interested, some of them in 
literature, some in science, some in philosophy. 
At the New College they discussed in their theo- 
logical society with daring and freedom the prob- 
lems of the time. A crisis was sure to come, 
and it might very well have been a crisis which 
would have broken the Church in pieces. That 
it did not was due largely to the influence of one 
man — the American Evangelist, Mr. Moody. 

In 1873 Mr. Moody commenced his campaign 
in the Barclay Free Church, Edinburgh. A few 
days before, Drummond had read a paper to the 
Theological Society of his college on Spiritual 
Diagnosis, in which he maintained that preach- 
ing was not the most important thing, but that 
personal dealing with those in anxiety would 
yield better results. In other words, he thought 
that practical religion might be treated as an 
exact science. He had given himself to scien- 
tific study with a view of standing for the degree 
of Doctor of Science. Moody at once made a 
deep impression on Edinburgh, and attracted 



INTRODUCTION 9 

the ablest students. He missed in this country 
a sufficient religious provision for young men, 
and he thought that young men could best be 
moulded by young men. With his keen Amer- 
ican eye he perceived that Drummond was his 
best instrument, and he immediately associated 
him in the work. It had almost magical results. 
From the very first Drummond attracted and 
deeply moved crowds, and the issue was that for 
two years he gave himself to this work of evan- 
gelism in England, in Scotland, and in Ireland. 
During this period he came to know the life 
histories of young men in all classes. He made 
himself a great speaker; he knew how to seize 
the critical moment, and his modesty, his refine- 
ment, his gentle and generous nature, his manli- 
ness, and above all, his profound conviction, 
won for him disciples in every place he visited. 
His companions were equally busy in their own 
lines, and in this way the Free Church was 
saved. A development on the lines of Tulloch 
and Wallace was impossible for the Free Church. 
Any change that might take place must conserve 
the vigorous evangelical life of which it had 
been the home. The change did take place. 
Robertson Smith, who was by far the first man 
of the circle, won, at the sacrifice of his own 
position, toleration for Biblical criticism, and 
proved that an advanced critic might be a con- 
vinced and fervent evangelical. Others did 
something, each in his own sphere, and it is 



io INTRODUCTION 

not too much to say that the effects have been 
world-wide. The recent writers of Scottish 
fiction — Barrie, Crockett, and Ian Maclaren — 
were all children of the Free Church, two of 
them being ministers. In almost every depart- 
ment of theological science, with perhaps the 
exception of Church history, Free Churchmen 
have made contributions which rank with the 
most important of the day. It is but bare jus- 
tice to say that the younger generation of Free 
Churchmen have done their share in claiming 
that Christianity should rule in all the fields of 
culture, that the Incarnation hallows every de- 
partment of human thought and activity. No 
doubt the claim has excited some hostility; at 
the same time the general public has rallied in 
overwhelming numbers to its support, and any 
book of real power written in a Christian spirit 
has now an audience compared with which that 
of most secular writers is small. 

Even at that time Drummond's evangelism was 
not of the ordinary type. When he had com- 
pleted his studies, after brief intervals of w r ork 
elsewhere, he found his professional sphere as 
lecturer on Natural Science in the Free Church 
College at Glasgow. There he came under the 
spell of Dr. Marcus Dods, to whom, as he always 
testified, he owed more than to any other man. 
He worked in a mission connected with Dr. Dods* 
congregation, and there preached the remarkable 
series of addresses which were afterwards pub- 



INTRODUCTION n 

lished as u Natural Law in the Spiritual World." 
The book appeared in 1883, and the author would 
have been quite satisfied with a circulation of 
1,000 copies. In England alone it has sold 
about 120,000 copies, while the American and 
foreign editions are beyond count. There is a 
natural prejudice against premature reconcilia- 
tions between science and religion. Many would 
say with Schiller : " Feindschaft sei zwischen 
euch, noch kommt ein Bundniss zu friihe : For- 
schet-beide getrennt, so wird die Wahrheit 
erkannt." In order to reconcile science and 
religion finally you must be prepared to say 
what is science and what is religion. Till that 
is done any synthesis must be premature, and 
any book containing it must in due time be 
superseded. Drummond was not blind to this, 
and yet he saw that something had to be done. 
Evolution was becoming more than a theory — it 
was an atmosphere. Through the teaching of 
evolutionists a subtle change was passing over 
morals, politics, and religion. Compromises had 
been tried and failed. The division of territory 
desired by some was found to be impossible. 
Drummond did not begin with doctrine and 
work downwards to nature. He ran up natural 
law as far as it would go, and then the doctrine 
burst into view. It was contended by the 
lamented Aubrey Moore that the proper thing 
is to begin with doctrine. While Moore would 
have admitted that science cannot be defined, 



12 INTRODUCTION 

that even the problem of evolution is one of 
which as yet we hardly know the outlines, he 
maintained that the first step was to begin with 
the theology of the Catholic Church, and that it 
was impossible to defend Christianity on the basis 
of anything less than the whole of the Church's 
creed. Drummond did not attempt this. He 
declined, for example, to consider the relation 
of evolution to the Fall and to the Pauline 
doctrine of redemption. What he maintained 
was that, if you begin at the natural laws, you 
end in the spiritual laws; and in a series of 
impressive illustrations he brought out his facts 
of science, some of them characteristic doctrines 
of Calvinism — brought them out sternly and un- 
disguisedly. By many of the orthodox he was 
welcomed as a champion, but others could not 
acquiesce in his assumption of evolution, and 
regarded him as more dangerous than an open 
foe. The book was riddled with criticisms from 
every side. Drummond himself never replied to 
these, but he gave his approval to an anonymous 
defence which appeared in the Expositor} and it 
is worth while recalling briefly the main points, 
(i) His critics rejected his main position, which 
was not that the spiritual laws are analogous to 
the natural laws, but that they are the same laws. 
To this he replied that if he had not shown iden- 
tity, he had done nothing; but he admitted that 
the application of natural law to the spiritual 
l Third Series, Vol. i. 



INTRODUCTION 13 

world had decided and necessary limits, the 
principle not applying to those provinces of the 
spiritual world most remote from human experi- 
ence. He adhered to the distinction between 
nature and grace, but he thought of grace also 
as forming part of the divine whole of nature, 
which is an emanation from the recesses of the 
divine wisdom, power and love. (2) His use of 
the law of biogenesis was severely attacked alike 
from the scientific and the religious side. Even 
Christian men of science thought he had laid 
dangerous stress on the principle omne vivum 
ex vivo, and declined to say that biogenesis was 
as certain as gravitation. They further affirmed, 
and surely with reason, that the principle is not 
essential to faith. From the religious side it was 
urged that he had grossly exaggerated the dis- 
tinction between the spiritual man and the 
natural man, and that he ignored the suscepti- 
bilities or affinities of the natural man for spirit- 
ual influence. The reply was that he had asserted 
the capacity for God very strongly. " The cham- 
ber is not only ready to receive the new life, but 
the Guest is expected, and till He comes is missed. 
Till then the soul longs and yearns, wastes and 
pines, waving its tentacles piteously in the empty 
air, or feeling after God if so be that it may find 
Him." (3) As for the charge that he could not 
reconcile his own statements as to divine efficiency 
and human responsibility, it was pointed out that 
this was only a phase of the larger difficulty of 



14 INTRODUCTION 

reconciling the exercise of the divine will with 
the freedom of the human will. What he main- 
tained, in common with Augustinian and Puritan 
theology, was that in every case of regeneration 
there is an original intervention of God. (4) The 
absence of reference to the Atonement was due 
to the fact that the doctrine belonged to a region 
inaccessible to the new method, lying in the 
depths of the Divine Mind, and only to be made 
known by revelation. (5) The charge that he 
taught the annihilation of the unregenerate was 
repudiated. The unregenerate had not fulfilled 
the conditions of eternal life ; but that does not 
show that they may not exist through eternity, 
for they exist at present, although in Mr. Drum- 
mond's sense they do not live. There is no doubt 
that many of the objections directed against his 
book applied equally to every form of what may 
be called evangelical Calvinism. But I think that 
the main impression produced on competent 
judges was that the volume, though written with 
brilliant clearness of thought and imagination, 
and full of the Christian spirit, did not give their 
true place to personality, freedom, and conscience, 
terms against which physical science may even be 
said to direct its whole artillery, so far as it tries 
to depersonalise man, but terms in which the very 
life of morality and religion is bound up. Per- 
haps Drummond himself came ultimately to take 
this view. In any case, Matthew Arnold's verdict 
will stand : " What is certain is that the author of 



INTRODUCTION 15 

the book has a genuine love of religion and a 
genuine religious experience." 

His lectureship in Glasgow was constituted into 
a professor's chair, and he occupied it for the rest 
of his life. His work gave him considerable free- 
dom. During a few months of the year he lec- 
tured on geology and botany, giving also scattered 
discourses on biological problems and the study 
of evolution. He had two examinations in the 
year, the first, which he called the " stupidity " 
examination, to test the men's knowledge of com- 
mon things, asking such questions as, " Why is 
grass green ? " " Why is the sea salt ? " " Why is 
the heaven blue?" "What is a leaf?" etc., etc. 
After this Socratic inquiry he began his teaching, 
and examined his students at the end. He taught 
in a class-room that was also a museum, always 
had specimens before him while lecturing, and 
introduced his students to the use of scientific 
instruments, besides taking them for geological 
excursions. In his time of leisure he travelled 
very widely. He paid three visits to America, 
and one to Australia. He also took the journey 
to Africa commemorated in his brilliant little 
book, " Tropical Africa," a work in which his in- 
sight, his power of selection, his keen observation, 
his fresh style, and his charming personality ap- 
pear to the utmost advantage. It was praised on 
every side, though Mr. Stanley made a criticism 
to which Drummond gave an effective and good- 
humoured retort. During these journeys and on 



1 6 INTRODUCTION 

other occasions at home he continued his work of 
evangelism. He addressed himself mainly to 
students, on whom he had a great influence, and 
for years went every week to Edinburgh for the 
purpose of delivering Sunday evening religious 
addresses to University men. He was invariably 
followed by crowds, the majority of whom were 
medical students. He also, on several occasions, 
delivered addresses in London to social and po- 
litical leaders, the audience including many of the 
most eminent men of the time. The substance 
of these addresses appeared in his famous book- 
lets, beginning with the " Greatest Thing in the 
World," and it may be worth while to say some- 
thing of their teaching. Mr. Drummond did not 
begin in the conventional way. He seemed to do 
without all that, to common Christianity, is indis- 
pensable. He approached the subject so disin- 
terestedly, with such an entire disregard of its one 
presupposition, sin, that many could never get on 
common ground with him. He entirely omitted 
that theology of the Cross which had been the 
substance hitherto of evangelistic addresses. No- 
body could say that his gospel was " arterial " or 
" ensanguined." In the first place, he had, like 
Emerson, a profound belief in the powers of the 
human will. That word of Spinoza which has 
been called a text in the scriptures of humanity 
might have been his motto. " He who desires to 
assist other people ... in common conversations 
will avoid referring to the vices of men, and will 



INTRODUCTION 17 

take care only sparingly to speak of human im- 
potence, while he will talk largely of human vir- 
tue or power, and of the way by which it may be 
made perfect, so that men being moved, not by 
fear or aversion, but by the effect of joy, may 
endeavour, as much as they can, to live under the 
rule of reason." With this sentence may be 
coupled its echo in the " Confessions of a Beauti- 
ful Soul " : " It is so much the more our duty, 
not like the advocate of the evil spirit, always to 
keep our eyes fixed upon the nakedness and 
weakness of our nature, but rather to seek out all 
those perfections through which we can make 
good our claims to a likeness to God." But 
along with this went a passionate devotion to 
Jesus Christ. Emerson said, " The man has never 
lived who can feed us ever." Drummond main- 
tained with absolute conviction that Christ could 
for ever and ever meet all the needs of the 
soul. In his criticism of " Ecce Homo," Mr. 
Gladstone answered the question whether the 
Christian preacher is ever justified in delivering 
less than a full Gospel. He argued that to go 
back to the very beginning of Christianity might 
be a method eminently suited to the needs of the 
present generation. The ship of Christianity was 
overloaded, not perhaps for fair weather, but when 
a gale came the mass strained over to the leeward. 
Drummond asked his hearers to go straight into 
the presence of Christ, not as He now presents 
Himself to us, bearing in His hand the long roll 



1 8 INTRODUCTION 

of His conquests, but as He offered Himself to 
the Jew by the Sea of Galilee, or in the syna- 
gogue of Capernaum, or in the temple of Jerusa- 
lem. He declined to take every detail of the 
Christianity in possession as part of the whole. 
He denied that the rejection of the non-essential 
involved parting with the essential, and he strove 
to go straight to the fountain-head itself. What- 
ever criticisms may be passed it will be allowed 
that few men in the century have done so much 
to bring their hearers and readers to the feet of 
Jesus Christ. It has been said of Carlyle that 
the one living ember of the old Puritanism that 
still burned vividly in his mind was the belief that 
honest and true men might find power in God to 
alter things for the better. Drummond believed 
with his whole heart that men might find power 
in Christ to change their lives. 

He had seven or eight months of the year at 
his disposal, and spent very little of them in his 
beautiful home at Glasgow. He wandered all 
over the world, and in genial human intercourse 
made his way to the hearts of rich and poor. 
He was as much at home in addressing a meet- 
ing of working men as in speaking at Grosvenor 
House. He had fastidious tastes, was always 
faultlessly dressed, and could appreciate the sur- 
roundings of civilisation. But he could at a 
moment's notice throw them all off and be per- 
fectly happy. As a traveller in Africa he cheer- 
fully endured much privation. He excelled in 



INTRODUCTION 19 

many sports and was a good shot. In some ways 
he was like Lavengro, and I will say that some 
parts of " Lavengro " would be unintelligible to 
me unless I had known Drummond. Although 
he refused to quarrel, and had a thoroughly loyal 
and deeply affectionate nature, he was yet in- 
dependent of others. He never married. He 
never undertook any work to which he did not 
feel himself called. Although he had the most 
tempting offers from editors, nothing would in- 
duce him to write unless the subject attracted 
him, and even then he was unwilling. Although 
he had great facility he never presumed upon it. 
He wrote brightly and swiftly, and would have 
made an excellent journalist. But everything he 
published was elaborated with the most scrupu- 
lous care. I have never seen manuscripts so 
carefully revised as his. All he did was appar- 
ently done with ease, but there was immense 
labour behind it. Although in orders he neither 
used the title nor the dress that go with them, 
but preferred to regard himself as a layman. He 
had a deep sense of the value of the Church. and 
its work, but I think was not himself connected 
with any Church, and never attended public wor- 
ship unless he thought the preacher had some 
message for him. He seemed to be invariably 
in good spirits, and invariably disengaged. He 
was always ready for any and every office of 
friendship. It should be said that, though few 
men were more criticised or misconceived, he 



20 INTRODUCTION 

himself never wrote an unkind word about any- 
one, never retaliated, never bore malice, and could 
do full justice to the abilities and character of his 
opponents. I have just heard that he exerted 
himself privately to secure an important appoint- 
ment for one of his most trenchant critics, and 
was successful. 

For years he had been working quietly at his 
last and greatest book, "The Ascent of Man." 
The chapters were first delivered as the Lowell 
Lectures in Boston, where they attracted great 
crowds. The volume was published in 1894, 
and though its sale was large, exceeding 20,000 
copies, it did not command his old public. This 
was due very much to the obstinacy with which 
he persisted in selling it at a net price, a proceed- 
ing which offended the booksellers, who had 
hoped to profit much from its sale. The work 
is much the most important he has left us. It 
was an endeavour, as has been said, to engraft 
an evolutionary sociology and ethic upon a bio- 
logical basis. The fundamental doctrine of the 
struggle of life leads to an individualistic sys- 
tem in which the moral side of nature has no 
place. Professor Drummond contended that the 
currently accepted theory, being based on an ex- 
clusive study of the conditions of nutrition, took 
account of only half the truth. With nutrition 
he associated, as a second factor, the function of 
reproduction, the struggle for the life of others, 
and maintained that this was of co-ordinate rank 



INTRODUCTION 21 

as a force in cosmic evolution. Though others 
had recognised altruism as modifying the opera- 
tion of egoism, Mr. Drummond did more. He 
tried to indicate the place of altruism as the out- 
come of those processes whereby the species is 
multiplied, and its bearing on the evolution of 
ethics. He desired, in other words, a unification 
of concept, the filling up of great gulfs that had 
seemed to be fixed. " If nature be the garment 
of God, it is woven without seam throughout ; if 
a revelation of God, it is the same yesterday, to- 
day, and for ever; if the expression of His will, 
there is in it no variableness nor shadow of turn- 
ing." After sketching the stages of the process 
of evolution, physical and ethical, he develops his 
central idea in the chapter on the struggle for the 
life of others, and then deals with the higher 
stages of the development of altruism as a modi- 
fying factor. The book was mercilessly criticised* 
but I believe that no one has attempted to deny the 
accuracy and the beauty of his scientific descrip- 
tions. Further, not a few eminent scientific men, 
like Professor Gairdner and Professor Macalister, 
have seen in it at least the germ out of which 
much may come. One of its severest critics, Dr. 
Dallinger, considers that nature is non-moral, and 
that religion begins with Christ. No man hath 
seen God at any time — this is what nature cer- 
tifies. The only begotten Son of the Father, He 
hath declared Him — this is the message of Chris- 
tianity. But there are many religious minds, and 



22 INTRODUCTION 

some scientific minds, convinced, in spite of all 
the difficulties, that natural law must be moral, 
and very loth to admit a hopeless dualism be- 
tween the physical and the moral order of the 
world. They say that the whole force of evolu- 
tion directs our glance forward, and that its motto 
is XPV Te'Xo? opav. 

With the publication of this book Drummond's 
career as a public teacher virtually ended. He 
who had never known an illness, who apparently 
had been exempted from care and sorrow, was 
prostrated by a painful and mysterious malady. 
One of his kind physicians, Dr. Freeland Barbour, 
informs me that Mr. Drummond suffered from a 
chronic affection of the bones. It maimed him 
greatly. He was laid on his back for more than 
a year, and had both arms crippled, so that 
reading was not a pleasure and writing almost 
impossible. For a long time he suffered acute 
pain. It was then that some who had greatly 
misconceived him came to a truer judgment of 
the man. Those who had often found the road 
rough had looked askance at Drummond as a 
spoiled child of fortune, ignorant of life's real 
meaning. But when he was struck down in his 
prime, at the very height of his happiness, when 
there was appointed for him, to use his own 
words, " a waste of storm and tumult before he 
reached the shore," it seemed as if his suffer- 
ings liberated and revealed the forces of his soul. 



INTRODUCTION 23 

The spectacle of his long struggle with a mortal 
disease was something more than impressive. 
Those who saw him in his illness saw that, as the 
physical life flickered low, the spiritual energy- 
grew. Always gentle and considerate, he became 
even more careful, more tender, more thoughtful, 
more unselfish. He never in any way complained. 
His doctors found it very difficult to get him to 
talk of his illness. It was strange and painful, 
but inspiring, to see his keenness, his mental 
elasticity, his universal interest. Dr. Barbour 
says : " I have never seen pain or weariness, or 
the being obliged to do nothing, more entirely 
overcome, treated, in fact, as if they were not. 
The end came suddenly from failure of the heart. 
Those with him received only a few hours' warn- 
ing of his critical condition." It was not like 
death. He lay on his couch in the drawing-room, 
and passed away in his sleep, with the sun shining 
in and the birds singing at the open window. 
There was no sadness nor farewell. It recalled 
what he himself said of a friend's death — "put- 
ting by the well-worn tools without a sigh, and 
expecting elsewhere better work to do." 

W. Robertson Nicoll. 



II 

HE had been in many places over the world 
and seen strange sights, and taken his 
share in various works, and, being the man he 
was, it came to pass of necessity that he had many 
friends. Some of them were street arabs, some 
were negroes, some were medicals, some were 
evangelists, some were scientists, some were theo- 
logians, some were nobles. Between each one 
and Drummond there was some affinity, and each 
could tell his own story about his friend. It will 
be interesting to hear what Professor Greenfield 
or Mr. Moody may have to say; but one man, 
with profound respect for such eminent persons, 
would prefer to have a study of Drummond by 
Moolu, his African retainer, Drummond believed 
in Moolu, not because he was " pious" — which 
he was not — but because "he did his duty and 
never told a lie/' From the chiefs point of view, 
Moolu had the final virtue of a clansman — he was 
loyal and faithful : his chief, for that expedition, 
had beyond most men the necessary endowment 
of a leader, a magnetic personality. It is under- 
stood that Drummond's life is to be written at 
large by a friend, in whose capable and wise 



INTRODUCTION 25 

hands it will receive full justice ; but in the mean- 
time it may not be unbecoming that one should 
pay his tribute who has his own qualification for 
this work of love. It is not that he is able to 
appreciate to the full the man's wonderful genius, 
or accurately to estimate his contributions to 
scientific and religious thought — this will be 
done by more distinguished friends — but that 
he knew Drummond constantly and intimately 
from boyhood to his death. If one has known 
any friend at school and college, and in the 
greater affairs of life has lived with him, argued 
with him, prayed with him, had his sympathy in 
the supreme moments of joy and sorrow, has had 
every experience of friendship except one — it 
was not possible to quarrel with Drummond, 
although you might be the hottest-tempered Celt 
on the face of the earth — then he may not under- 
stand the value of his friend's work, but at any 
rate he understands his friend. As one who knew 
Henry Drummond at first hand, my desire is to 
tell what manner of man he was in all honesty 
and without eulogy. If any one be offended 
then, let him believe that I wrote what I have 
seen, and if any one be incredulous, then I can 
only say that he did not know Drummond. 

His body was laid to rest a few weeks ago, on 
a wet and windy March day, in the most romantic 
of Scottish cemeteries, and the funeral, on its way 
from the home of his boyhood to the Castle Rock 
of Stirling, passed the King's Park. It was in 



26 INTRODUCTION 

that park more than thirty years ago that I first 
saw Drummond, and on our first meeting he pro- 
duced the same effect as he did all his after life. 
The sun was going down behind Ben Lomond, 
in the happy summer time, touching with gold 
the gray old castle, deepening the green upon the 
belt of trees which fringed the eastern side of 
the park, and filling the park itself with soft, mel- 
low light. A cricket match between two schools 
had been going on all day and was coming to an 
end, and I had gone out to see the result — being a 
new arrival in Stirling, and full of curiosity. The 
two lads at the wickets were in striking contrast — 
one heavy, stockish, and determined, who slogged 
powerfully and had scored well for his side ; the 
other nimble, alert, graceful, who had a pretty 
but uncertain play. The slogger was forcing 
the running in order to make up a heavy leeway, 
and compelled his partner to run once too often. 
"It's all right, and you fellows are not to cry 
shame " — this was what he said as he joined his 
friends — "Buchanan is playing Ai, and that hit 
ought to have been a four ; I messed the running." 
It was good form, of course, and what any decent 
lad would want to say, but there was an accent of 
gaiety and a certain air which was very taking. 
Against that group of clumsy, unformed, awkward 
Scots lads this bright, straight, living figure stood 
in relief, and as he moved about the field my eyes 
followed him, and in my boyish and dull mind I 
had a sense that he was a type by himself, a visitor 



INTRODUCTION 27 

of finer breed than those among whom he moved. 
By-and-by he mounted a friend's pony and gal- 
loped along the race-course in the park till one 
only saw a speck of white in the sunlight, and still 
I watched in w T onder and fascination — only a boy 
of thirteen or so, and dull — till he came back, in 
time to cheer the slogger who had pulled off the 
match — with three runs to spare — and carried 
his bat 

" Well played, old chap ! " the pure, clear, 
joyous note rang out on the evening air ; " finest 
thing you Ve ever done," while the strong-armed, 
heavy-faced slogger stood still and looked at him 
in admiration, and made amends. " I say, Drum- 
mond, it was my blame you were run out. . . ." 
Drummond was his name, and some one said 
" Henry." So I first saw my friend. 

What impressed me that pleasant evening in 
the days of long ago I can now identify. It was 
the lad's distinction, an inherent quality of ap- 
pearance and manner of character and soul 
which marked him and made him solitary. 
What happened with one strange lad that even- 
ing befell all kinds of people who met Drummond 
in later years. They were at once arrested, in- 
terested, fascinated by the very sight of the man, 
and could not take their eyes off him. Like a 
picture of the first order among ordinary portraits 
he unconsciously put his neighbours at a disad- 
vantage. One did not realise how commonplace 
and colourless other men were till they stood side 



28 INTRODUCTION 

by side with Drummond. Upon a platform of 
evangelists, or sitting among divinity students in 
a dingy classroom, or cabined in the wooden re- 
spectability of an ecclesiastical court, or standing 
in a crowd of passengers at a railway station, he 
suggested golden embroidery upon hodden gray. 
It was as if the prince of one's imagination had 
dropped in among common folk. He reduced 
us all to the peasantry. 

Drummond was a handsome man, such as you 
could not match in ten days' journey, with deli- 
cately cut features, rich auburn hair, and a cer- 
tain carriage of nobility, but the distinctive and 
commanding feature of his face was his eye. No 
photograph could do it justice, and very often 
photographs have done it injustice, by giving the 
idea of staringness. His eye was not bold or 
fierce ; it was tender and merciful. But it had a 
power and hold which were little else than irre- 
sistible and almost supernatural. When you 
talked with Drummond, he did not look at you 
and out of the window alternately, as is the usual 
manner; he never moved his eyes, and gradually 
their penetrating gaze seemed to reach and en- 
compass your soul. It was as Plato imagined it 
would be in the judgment; one soul was in con- 
tact with another — nothing between. No man 
could be double, or base, or mean, or impure be- 
fore that eye. His influence, more than that of 
any man I have ever met, was mesmeric — which 
means that while other men affect their fellows 



INTRODUCTION 29 

by speech and example, he seized one directly 
by his living personality. As a matter of fact, 
he had given much attention to the occult arts, 
and was at one time a very successful mesmerist. 
It will still be remembered by some college com- 
panions how he had one student so entirely under 
his power that the man would obey him on the 
street and surrender his watch without hesitation, 
and it was told how Drummond laid a useful in- 
junction on a boy in a house where he was staying, 
and the boy obeyed it so persistently afterwards 
that Drummond had to write and set him free. 
Quite sensible and unromantic people grew un- 
easy in his presence, and roused themselves to 
resistance — as one might do who recognised a 
magician and feared his spell. 

One sometimes imagines life as a kind of gas 
of which our bodies are the vessels, and it is evi- 
dent that a few are much more richly charged 
than their fellows. Most people simply exist 
completing their tale of work — not a grain over; 
doing their measured mile — not an inch beyond ; 
thinking along the beaten track — never tempted 
to excursions. Here and there in the world you 
come across a person in whom life is exuberant 
and overflowing, a force which cannot be tamed 
or quenched. Drummond was such an one, the 
most vital man I ever saw, who never loitered, 
never wearied, never was conventional, pedantic, 
formal, who simply revelled in the fulness of life. 
He was so radiant with life that ordinary people 



30 INTRODUCTION 

showed pallid beside him, and shrank from him 
or were attracted and received virtue out of him. 
Like one coming in from the light and open air 
into a stuffy room where a company had been 
sitting with closed windows, Drummond burst 
into bloodless and unhealthy coteries, bringing 
with him the very breath of heaven. 

He was the Evangelist to thoughtful men — 
over women he had far less power — and his 
strength lay in his personality. Without anec- 
dotes or jokes, or sensationalism or doctrine, 
without eloquence or passion, he moved young 
men at his will because his message was life, and 
he was its illustration. His words fell one by one 
with an indescribable awe and solemnity, in the 
style of the Gospels, and reached the secret 
place of the soul. Nothing more unlike the 
ordinary evangelistic address could be imagined : 
it was so sane, so persuasive, so mystical, so 
final. It almost followed, therefore, that he was 
not the ideal of a popular evangelist who has to 
address the multitude, and produce his effect on 
those who do not think. For his work, it is 
necessary — besides earnestness, which is taken 
for granted — to have a loud voice, a broad hu- 
mour, a stout body, a flow of racy anecdote, an 
easy negligence of connection, a spice of con- 
tempt for culture, and pledges of identification 
with the street in dress and accent. His hearers 
feel that such a man is homely and is one of 
themselves, and, amid laughter and tears of sim- 



INTRODUCTION 31 

pie human emotion, they are moved by his speech 
to higher things. This kind of audience might 
regard Drummond with respectful admiration, but 
he was too fine a gentleman, they would con- 
sider, for their homespun. Place him, as he 
used to stand and speak, most perfectly dressed 
both as to body and soul, before five hundred 
men of good taste and fine sensibilities, or the 
same number of young men not yet cultured but 
full of intellectual ambitions and fresh enthu- 
siasm, and no man could state the case for Christ 
and the soul after a more spiritual and winsome 
fashion. Religion is without doubt the better for 
the popular evangelist, although there be times 
when quiet folk think that he needs chastening ; 
religion also requires in every generation one 
representative at least of the higher evangelism, 
and if any one should ask what manner of man 
he ought to be, the answer is to his hand — 
Henry Drummond. 

When one admits, without reserve, that his 
friend was not made by nature to be a successful 
officer of the Salvation Army, it must not be 
understood that Drummond was in any sense a 
superior person, or that he sniffed in his dainti- 
ness at ordinary humanity — a spiritual Matthew 
Arnold. It would strain my conscience to bear 
witness that working people, say, however much 
they loved him, were perfectly at home with him, 
and it is my conviction, from observation of life, 
that this is an inevitable disability of distinction. 



32 INTRODUCTION 

One may be so well dressed, so good looking, so 
well mannered, so spiritually refined, that men 
with soiled clothes and women cleaning the house 
may realise their low estate, and miss that free- 
masonry which at once by a hundred signs unites 
them in five minutes with a plainer man. While 
this may have been true, the blame was not his, 
and no man lived who had a more unaffected in- 
terest and keener joy in human life in the home 
or on the street. No power could drag him past 
a Punch-and-Judy show — the ancient, perennial, 
ever-delightful theatre of the people — in which, 
each time of attendance, he detected new points 
of interest. He would, in early days, if you 
please, gaze steadfastly into a window, in the 
High Street of Edinburgh, till a little crowd of 
men, women, children, and workmen, loafers, 
soldiers, had collected, and join with much zest 
in the excited speculations regarding the man — 
unanimously and suddenly imagined to have been 
carried in helpless — how he met with his acci- 
dent, where he was hurt, and whether he would 
recover, listening eagerly to the explanation of 
the gathering given by some officious person to 
the policeman, and joining heartily in the re- 
proaches levelled at some unknown deceiver. 
One of his chosen subjects of investigation, 
which he pursued with the zeal and patience of a 
naturalist, was that ever-interesting species — the 
Boy, whom he studied in his various forms and 
haunts : at home for the holidays, on the cricket 



INTRODUCTION 33 

field, playing marbles on the street with a chance 
acquaintance while two families wait for their 
food, or living with many resources and high en- 
joyment in a barrel. There was nothing in a 
boy he did not know, could not explain, did not 
sympathise with, and so long as it lasts his name 
will be associated with the Boys' Brigade. While 
any other would only have seen two revellers in 
a man and woman singing their devious way 
along the street at night, Drummond detected 
that a wife, who had not been drinking, was lur- 
ing her husband home by falling in with his 
mood, and that before it was reached she might 
need a friendly hand. His sense of humour was 
unerring, swift and masterful. If he came upon 
a good thing in his reading he would walk a mile 
to share it with a friend, and afterwards depart in 
the strength thereof, and he has been found in 
his room exhausted with delight with nothing 
before him but one of those Parisian plaster 
caricatures of a vagabond. Lying on his back in 
the pitiable helplessness and constant pain of 
those last two years, he was still the same man. 

" Don't touch me, please ; I can't shake hands, 
but I Ve saved up a first-rate story for you," and 
his palate was too delicate to pass anything 
second-rate. Partly this was his human joyous- 
ness, to whom the absurdities of life were ever 
dear ; partly it was his bravery, who knew that 
the sight of him brought so low might be too 
much for a friend. His patience and sweetness 

3 



34 INTRODUCTION 

continued to the end, and he died as one who 
had tasted the joy of living and was satisfied. 

His nature had, at the same time, a curious 
aloofness and separateness from human life, which 
one felt, but can hardly describe. He could be 
severe in speaking about a mean act or one who 
had done wickedly, but in my recollection he was 
never angry, and it was impossible to imagine 
him in a towering passion. He was profoundly 
interested in several causes, but there was not in 
him the making of a fanatical or headlong sup- 
porter. None could be more loyal in the private 
offices of friendship, but he would not have flung 
himself into his friend's public quarrel. In no 
circumstances would he be carried off his feet by 
emotion or be consumed by a white heat of en- 
thusiasm. He was ever calm, cool, self-possessed 
master of himself, passionless in thought, in 
speech, in action, in soul. Were you in trouble 
he had helped you to his last resource, and con- 
cealed, if possible, his service ; but of you, in his 
sore straits, he would have neither asked nor 
wished for aid. Many confidences he must have 
received ; he gave none ; many people must have 
been succoured by him ; none succoured him till 
his last illness. Towards women, who are the 
test and revelation of men, he was ever chival- 
rous, but he left the impression on your mind 
that neither they nor their company — there may 
have been exceptions — attracted or satisfied him. 
He was too courteous a gentleman to give any 



INTRODUCTION 35 

sign, but one guessed that a woman's departure 
from the room meant to him no loss, and was 
rather a relief. One was certain that he was 
loved ; one was quite certain that he would never 
marry. So sexless was he towards women, so 
neutral towards men, so void of the elemental 
passions, which go to make the colour and 
tragedy of life, yet so noble and true was he, 
that one regarded him at times with awe, and for 
a moment thought of him as a being of another 
race, mingling with our life in all kindliness, yet 
maintaining and guarding his other world in- 
tegrity. 

This is at least perfectly certain that from his 
youth he refused to have his life arranged for 
him, but jealously and fearlessly directed it by 
his own instincts, refusing the brown, beaten 
paths wherein each man, according to his profes- 
sion, was content to walk, and starting across the 
moor on his own way. Nothing can be more 
conventional than the career of the average Pres- 
byterian minister who comes from a respectable 
religious family, and has the pulpit held up be- 
fore him as the ambition of a good Scots lad ; 
who is held in the way thereto by various tradi- 
tional and prudential considerations, and better 
still — as is the case with most honest lads — by 
his mother's wishes ; who works his laborious, 
enduring way through the Divinity Hall, and is 
yearly examined by the local Presbytery ; who at 
last emerges into the butterfly life of a Proba- 



36 INTRODUCTION 

tioner, and is freely mentioned, to his mother's 
anxious delight, in connection with " vacancies "; 
who is at last chosen by a majority to a pastorate 
— his mother being amazed at the blindness of 
the minority — and settles down to the routine 
of the ministry in some Scotch parish with the 
hope of Glasgow before him as a land of promise. 
His only variations in the harmless years might 
be an outburst on the historical reality of 
the Book of Jonah — ah me ! Did that stout, 
middle-aged gentleman ever hint that Jonah was 
a drama? — which would be much talked of in the 
common room, and, it was whispered, reached 
the Professor's ears; and afterwards he might 
propose a revolutionary motion on the distribu- 
tion of the Sustentation Fund. Add a handbook 
for Bible-classes on the Prophecy of Malachi, and 
you have summed up the adventures of his life. 
This was the life before Drummond when he en- 
tered the University of Edinburgh in 1866, and it 
ought to be recorded that he died an ordained 
minister and Professor of the Kirk, so that he did 
not disappoint his home, not become an eccle- 
siastical prodigal — but with what amazing varia- 
tions did he invest the years between ! What 
order he took his classes in no one knew, but he 
found his feet in natural philosophy and made a 
name in geology. His course at the New Col- 
lege he completed in three years and one year, 
with two years' evangelistic touring between ; and 
he once electrified the students by a paper — it 



INTRODUCTION 37 

seems yesterday, and I know where he stood — 
which owed much to Holmes and Emerson, but 
revealed his characteristic spiritual genius. His 
vacations he spent sometimes in tutorships, which 
yielded wonderful adventures, or at Tubingen, 
where his name was long remembered. As soon 
as Moody came to Edinburgh, Drummond allied 
himself with the most capable, honest, and un- 
selfish evangelist of our day, and saw strange 
chapters in religious life through the United King- 
dom. This was the infirmary in which he learned 
spiritual diagnosis. For one summer he was 
chaplain at Malta; in another he explored the 
Rockies; he lived five months among the Tan- 
ganyika forests, where he sent me a letter dated 
Central Africa, and mentioning, among other de- 
tails, that he had nothing on but a helmet and 
three mosquitoes. He was for a time assistant in 
an Edinburgh church, and readers of the illus- 
trated papers used to recognise him in the vice- 
regal group at Dublin Castle. His people at home 
— one could trace some of his genius and much 
of his goodness to his father and mother — grew 
anxious and perplexed ; for this was a meteoric 
course for a Free Kirk minister, and stolid ac- 
quaintances — the delicious absurdity of it — re- 
monstrated with him as one who was allowing the 
chances of life to pass him, and urged him to 
settle. His friends had already concluded that 
he must be left free to fulfil himself, but knew not 
what to expect, when he suddenly appeared as a 



38 INTRODUCTION 

lecturer on Natural Science in the Free Church 
College of Glasgow, and promptly annexed a 
working-men's church. Afterwards his lecture- 
ship became a chair, and he held it to the end, 
although threatened with charges of heresy and 
such like absurdities. You might as well have 
beaten a spirit with a stick as prosecuted Drum- 
mond for heresy. The chair itself was a standing 
absurdity, being founded in popular idea to beat 
back evolution and to reconcile religion and sci- 
ence ; but it gave Drummond an opportunity of 
widening the horizon of the future ministry and 
infusing sweetness into the students* minds. He 
may have worn a white tie on Sunday duty at his 
church, but memory fails to recall this spectacle, 
and he consistently refused to be called Reverend 
— declaring (this was his fun) that he had no rec- 
ollection of being ordained, and that he would 
never dare to baptise a child. The last time he 
preached was about 1882, in my own church, and 
the outside world did not know that he was a 
clergyman. From first to last he was guided by 
an inner light which never led him astray, and 
in the afterglow his whole life is a simple and 
perfect harmony. 

Were one asked to select Drummond's finest 
achievement, he might safely mention the cleans- 
ing of student life at Edinburgh University. 
When he was an arts student, life in all the facul- 
ties, but especially the medical, was reckless, 
coarse, boisterous, and no one was doing anything 



INTRODUCTION 39 

to raise its tone. The only visible sign of religion 
in my remembrance was a prayer meeting at- 
tended by a dozen men — one of whom was a 
canting rascal — and countenance from a profes- 
sor would have given a shock to the university. 
Twenty years afterwards six hundred men, largely 
medicals, met every Sunday evening for worship 
and conference under Drummond's presidency, 
and every evening the meeting was addressed by 
tutors and fellows and other dignitaries. There 
was a new breath in academic life — men were 
now reverent, earnest, clean living and clean think- 
ing, and the reformer who wrought this change 
was Drummond. This land, and for that matter 
the United States, has hardly a town where men 
are not doing good work for God and man to-day 
who have owed their lives to the Evangel and 
influence of Henry Drummond. 

When one saw the unique and priceless work 
which he did, it was inexplicable and very pro- 
voking that the religious world should have cast 
this man, of all others, out, and have lifted up its 
voice against him. Had religion so many men 
of beautiful and winning life, so many thinkers 
of wide range and genuine culture, so many 
speakers who can move young men by hundreds 
towards the Kingdom of God, that she could 
afford or have the heart to withdraw her con- 
fidence from Drummond ? Was there ever such 
madness and irony before Heaven as good peo- 
ple lifting up their testimony and writing articles 



4 o INTRODUCTION 

against this most gracious disciple of the Master, 
because they did not agree with him about cer- 
tain things he said, or some theory he did not 
teach, while the world lay round them in unbelief 
and selfishness, and sorrow and pain? " What 
can be done," an eminent evangelist once did me 
the honour to ask, " to heal the breach between 
the religious world and Drummond?" And I 
dared to reply that in my poor judgment the first 
step ought to be for the religious world to repent 
of its sins, and make amends to Drummond for 
its bitterness. The evangelist indicated that, so 
far as he knew his world, it was very unlikely to do 
any such becoming deed, and I did not myself 
remember any instance of repentance on the part 
of the Pharisees. Then, growing bold, I ven- 
tured to ask why the good man had not sum- 
moned Drummond to his side, as he was working 
in a university town, and knew better than any 
other person that he could not find anywhere an 
assistant so acceptable or skilful. He agreed in 
that, but declared at once that if Drummond came 
his present staff would leave, and that two men 
could not do all the work, which seemed reason- 
able, and, besides, every man knows his own 
business best, and that evangelist knew his re- 
markably well. Nothing more remained to be 
said, and I rose to leave. At the far end of the 
room some of the staff were talking together. 
" I gave them a * straight talk ' at the men's meet- 
ing last night, and then we had such a sweet little 



INTRODUCTION 41 

'sing/ and thirty souls dropped in." A young 
man of the better class was speaking, and I looked 
at the weak, self-satisfied face, but it is not neces- 
sary to write down my reflections as I left the 
place. Never did my friend say one unkind word 
of the world which condemned him, but it may be 
allowed to another to say that if any one wishes 
to indict the professional religionists of our time 
for bigotry and stupidity, painful and unanswer- 
able proof lies ready to his hand in the fact that 
the finest evangelist of the day was treated as a 
Samaritan. 

One, of course, remembers that Drummond's 
critics had their reasons, and those reasons cast 
interesting light on his theological standpoint. 
For one thing, unlike most evangelists, it was 
perfectly alien to this man to insist on repent- 
ance, simply because he had not the painful and 
overmastering sense of sin which afflicts most 
religious minds, and gives a strenuous turn to all 
their thinking. Each thinker conceives religion 
according to his cast of mind and trend of expe- 
rience, and Christianity to Drummond was not so 
much a way of escape from the grip of sin, with 
its burden of guilt and loathsome contact, as a 
way of ethical and spiritual attainment. The 
question he was ever answering in his writing 
and speaking was not how can a man save his 
soul, but how can a man save his life. His idea 
of salvation was rising to the stature of Christ 
and sharing His simple, lowly, peaceful life. This 



42 INTRODUCTION 

was the text of his brochures on religion, which 
charmed the world from " The Greatest Thing in 
the World " to " The City Without a Church." 
It is said even they gave offence to some ultra- 
theological minds — although one would fain have 
believed that such persuasive pleas have won all 
hearts — and I have some faint remembrance, 
perhaps a nightmare, that people published re- 
plies to the eulogy of Love. It was quite beside 
the mark to find fault with the theology in the 
little books, because there was none and could 
be none, since there was none in the author. Just 
as there are periods in the development of Chris- 
tianity, there are men in every age corresponding 
to each of the periods — modern, Reformation, 
and Mediaeval minds — and what charmed many in 
Drummond was this, that he belonged by nature 
to the pre-theological age. He was in his habit 
and thought a Christian of the Gospels, rather 
than of the Epistles, and preferred to walk with 
Jesus in Galilee rather than argue with Judaisers 
and Gnostics. It would be a gross injustice to 
say that he was anti-theological: it would be 
correct to say that he was non-theological. Jesus 
was not to him an official Redeemer discharging 
certain obligations: He was his unseen Friend 
with whom he walked in life, by Whose fellow- 
ship he was changed, to Whom he prayed. The 
effort of life should be to do the Will of God, the 
strength of life was Peace, the reward of life was 
to be like Jesus. Perfect Christianity was to be 



INTRODUCTION 43 

as St. John was with Jesus. It was the Idyll of 
Religion. 

Perhaps his two famous books, " Natural Law 
in the Spiritual World," and "The Ascent of 
Man," ought to be judged as larger Idylls. A 
writer often fails when he has counted himself 
strong, and succeeds in that which he has him- 
self belittled. It was at one time Drummond's 
opinion that he had made a discovery in that 
fascinating debatable land between nature and 
religion, and that he was able to prove that the 
laws which govern the growth of a plant are 
the same in essence as those which regulate 
the culture of a soul. It appeared to some of 
us that the same laws could not and did not 
run through both provinces, but that on the 
frontier of the spiritual world other laws came 
into operation, and that " Natural Law" set forth 
with much grace and ingenuity a number of 
instructive analogies, and sometimes only sug- 
gestive illustrations. Had Drummond believed 
this was its furthest scope, he would never have 
published the book, and it was an open secret 
that in later years he lost all interest in " Natural 
Law." My own idea is that he had abandoned 
its main contention and much of its teaching, 
and would have been quite willing to see it with- 
drawn from the public. While that book was an 
attempt to identify the laws of two worlds which, 
under one suzerain, are really each autonomous, 
the "Ascent of Man" was a most successful 



44 INTRODUCTION 

effort to prove that the spirit of Religion, which 
is altruism, pervades the processes of nature. 
It is the Poem of Evolution, and is from begin- 
ning to end a fascinating combination of scien- 
tific detail and spiritual imagination. Both 
books, but especially the Ascent, were severely- 
criticised from opposite quarters, by theologians 
because the theology was not sound, by men 
of science because the science was loose, and 
Drummond had the misfortune of being a heretic 
in two provinces. But he had his reward in the 
gratitude of thousands neither dogmatic nor par- 
tisan, to whom he has given a new vision of the 
beauty of life and the graciousness of law. 

His books will do good for years, as they have 
done in the past, and his tract on Charity will 
long be read, but the man was greater than all 
his writings. While he was competent in science, 
in religion he was a master, and if in this sphere 
he failed anywhere in his thinking, it was in his 
treatment of sin. This was the defect of his 
qualities, for of him, more than of any man 
known to me, it could be affirmed he did not 
know sin. As Fra Angelico could paint the 
Holy Angels because he had seen them, but 
made poor work of the devils because to him 
they were strange creatures, so this man could 
make holiness so lovely that all men wished to be 
Christians ; but his hand lost its cunning at the 
mention of sin, for he had never played the fool. 
From his youth up he had kept the command- 



INTRODUCTION 45 

ments, and was such a man as the Master would 
have loved. One takes for granted that each 
man has his besetting sin, and we could name 
that of our friends, but Drummond was an ex- 
ception to this rule. After a lifetime's intimacy 
I do not remember my friend's failing. Without 
pride, without envy, without selfishness, without 
vanity, moved only by goodwill and spiritual 
ambitions, responsive ever to the touch of God 
and every noble impulse, faithful, fearless, mag- 
nanimous, Henry Drummond was the most 
perfect Christian I have known or expect to see 
this side the grave. 

John Watson. 

(Ian Maclaren.) 



The Ideal Life 

NUMBER I 

Ill-Temper 

THE ELDER 
BROTHER 

" He was angry, and would not go zn." — Luke xv. 28. 

THOSE who have studied the paintings of 
Sir Noel Paton must have observed that 
part of their peculiar beauty lies, by a trick of 
Art, in their partial ugliness. There are flowers 
and birds, knights and ladies, gossamer-winged 
fairies and children of seraphic beauty ; but in the 
corner of the canvas, or just at their feet, some un- 
couth and loathsome form — a toad, a lizard, a 
slimy snail — to lend, by contrast with its repulsive- 
ness, a lovelier beauty to the rest. So in ancient 
sculpture the griffin and the dragon grin among 
the angel faces on the cathedral front, heighten- 
ing the surrounding beauty by their deformity. 

Many of the literary situations of the New 
Testament powerfully exhibit this species of 
contrast. The twelve disciples — one of them 
is a devil. Jesus upon the Cross, pure and regal 
— on either side a thief. And here, as conspicu- 



48 ILL-TEMPER 

ously, in this fifteenth chapter of Luke, the most 
exquisite painting in the Bible is touched off at 
the foot with the black thundercloud of the elder 
brother — perfect, as a mere dramatic situation. 

But this conjunction, of course, is more than 
artistic. Apart from its reference to the Phari- 
sees, the association of these two characters — 
the prodigal and his brother — side by side has 
a deep moral significance. 

When we look into Sin, not in its theological 
aspects, but in its everyday clothes, we find that 
it divides itself into two kinds. We find that 
there are sins of the body and sins of the dispo- 
sition. Or more narrowly, sins of the passions, 
including all forms of lust and selfishness, and 
sins of the temper. The prodigal is the instance 
in the New Testament of sins of passion; the 
elder brother, of sins of temper. 

One would say, at a first glance, that it was the 
younger brother in this picture who wa# the 
thundercloud. It was he who had dimmed all 
the virtues, and covered himself and his home 
with shame. And men have always pointed to 
the runaway son in contrast with his domestic 
brother, as the type of all that is worst in human 
character. Possibly the estimate is wrong. Pos- 
sibly the elder brother is the worse. We judge of 
sins, as we judge of most things, by their out- 
ward form. We arrange the vices of our neigh- 
bours according to a scale which society has 
tacitly adopted, placing the more gross and 



ILL-TEMPER 49 

public at the foot, the slightly less gross higher 
up, and then by some strange process the scale 
becomes obliterated. Finally it vanishes into 
space, leaving lengths of itself unexplored, its 
sins unnamed, unheeded, and unshunned. But 
we have no balance to weigh sins. Coarser and 
finer are but words of our own. The chances 
are, if anything, that the finer are the lower. 
The very fact that the world sees the coarser 
sins so well is against the belief that they are the 
worst. The subtle and unseen sin, that sin in 
the part of the nature most near to the spiritual, 
ought to be more degrading than any other. 
Yet for many of the finer forms of sin society 
has yet no brand. This sin of the elder brother 
is a mere trifle, only a little bit of temper, and 
scarcely worthy the recording. 

Now what was this little bit of temper? For 
Christ saw fit to record it. The elder brother, 
hard-working, patient, dutiful — let him get full 
credit for his virtues — comes in from his long 
day's work in the fields. Every night for years 
he has plodded home like this, heavy-limbed but 
light-hearted, for he has done his duty and honest 
sweat is on his brow. But a man's sense of re- 
sponsibility for his character ends too often with 
the day's work. And we always meet the temp- 
tation which is to expose us when we least 
expect it. To-night, as he nears the old home- 
stead, he hears the noise of mirth and music. 
He makes out the strain of a dancing measure 
4 



50 ILL-TEMPER 

— a novel sound, surely, for the dull farm. 
"Thy brother is come," the servant says, " and 
they have killed the fatted calf." His brother ! 
Happy hour ! how long they mourned for him ! 
How glad the old man would be ! How the 
family prayer has found him out at last and 
brought the erring boy to his parents' roof! But 
no — there is no joy on that face; it is the thun- 
dercloud. "Brother, indeed, " he mutters; "the 
scapegrace! Killed the fatted calf, have they? 
More than they ever did for me. I can teach 
them what I think of their merry-making. And 
talk of the reward of virtue ! Here have I been 
all these years unhonoured and ignored, and this 
young roue from the swine-troughs assembles the 
whole country-side to do him homage." " And 
he was angry, and would not go in." 

" Oh, the baby!" one inclines to say at first; 
but it is more than this. It is the thundercloud, 
a thundercloud which has been brewing under 
all his virtues all his life. It is the thundercloud. 
The subtle fluids from a dozen sins have come 
together for once, and now they are scorching 
his soul. Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, 
cruelty, self-righteousness, sulkiness, touchiness, 
doggedness, all mixed up together into one — 111 
Temper. This is a fair analysis. Jealousy, 
anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteous- 
ness, sulkiness, touchiness, doggedness, — these 
are the staple ingredients of 111 Temper. And 
yet, men laugh over it. " Only temper," they 



ILL-TEMPER 51 

call it: a little hot-headedness, a momentary 
ruffling of the surface, a mere passing cloud. 
But the passing cloud is composed of drops, and 
the drops here betoken an ocean, foul and ran- 
corous, seething somewhere within the life — an 
ocean made up of jealousy, anger, pride, un- 
charity, cruelty, self-righteousness, sulkiness, 
touchiness, doggedness, lashed into a raging 
storm. 

This is why temper is significant. It is not in 
what it is that its significance lies, but in what it 
reveals. But for this it were not worth notice. 
It is the intermittent fever which tells of uninter- 
mittent disease; the occasional bubble escaping 
to the surface, betraying the rottenness under- 
neath ; a hastily prepared specimen of the hid- 
den products of the soul, dropped involuntarily 
when you are off your guard. In one word, it is 
the lightning-form of a dozen hideous and un- 
christian sins. 

One of the first things to startle us — leaving 
now mere definition — about sins of temper, is 
their strange compatibility with high moral char- 
acter. The elder brother, without doubt, was a 
man of high principle. Years ago, when his 
father divided unto them his living, he had the 
chance to sow his wild oats if he liked. As the 
elder brother, there fell to him the larger portion. 
Now was his time to see the world, to enjoy life, 
and break with the monotony of home. Like a 
dutiful son, he chose his career. The old home 



52 ILL-TEMPER 

should be his world, the old people his society. 
He would be his father's right hand, and cheer 
and comfort his declining years. So to the ser- 
vants he became a pattern of industry; to the 
neighbours an example of thrift and faithfulness ; 
a model young man to all the country, and the 
more so by contrast with his vagabond brother. 
For association with lofty character is a painful 
circumstance of this deformity. And it suggests 
strange doubts as to the real virtue of much that 
is reckoned virtue and gets credit for the name. 
In reality we have no criterion for estimating at 
their true worth men who figure as models of all 
the virtues. Everything depends on motive. 
The virtues may be real or only apparent, even 
as the vices may be real though not apparent. 
Some men, for instance, are kept from going 
astray by mere cowardice. They have not char- 
acter enough to lose their character. For it 
often requires a strong character to go wrong. 
It demands a certain originality and courage, a 
pocketing of pride of which all are not capable, 
before a man can make up his mind to fall out of 
step with Society and scatter his reputation to the 
winds. So it comes to pass that many very mean 
men retain their outward virtue. Conversely, 
among the prodigal sons of the world are often 
found characters of singular beauty. The prodi- 
gal, no doubt, was a better man to meet and spend 
an hour with than his immaculate brother. A 
wealth of tenderness and generosity, truly sweet 



ILL-TEMPER 53 

and noble dispositions, constantly surprise us in 
characters hopelessly under the ban of men. But 
it is an instance of misconception as to the nature 
of sin that with most men this counts for nothing; 
although in those whose defalcation is in the lower 
region it counts, and counts almost for everything. 
Many of those who sow to the flesh regard their 
form of sin as trifling compared with the inconsis- 
tent and unchristian graces of those who profess to 
sow to the spirit. Many a man, for example, who 
thinks nothing of getting drunk would scorn to do 
an ungenerous deed or speak a withering word. 
And, as already said, it is really a question whether 
he is not right. One man sins high up in his nature, 
the other low down ; and the vinous spendthrift, 
on the whole, may be a better man than the 
acid Christian. " Verily, I say unto you," said 
Jesus to the priests, " the publicans and the har- 
lots go into the kingdom of God before you." 

The fact, then, that there are these two distinct 
sets of sins, and that few of us indulge both, but 
most of us indulge the one or the other, explains 
compatibility of virtuous conduct with much un- 
loveliness of disposition. Now it is this very 
association which makes sins of temper appear 
so harmless. There cannot be much wrong, we 
fancy, where there is so much general good. 
How often it is urged as an apology for garrulous 
people, that they are the soul of kindness if we 
only knew them better. And how often it is 
maintained, as a set-off against crossness and 



54 ILL-TEMPER 

pitiable explosions of small distempers, that those 
who exhibit them are, in their normal mood, 
above the average in demonstrative tenderness. 
And it is this which makes it so hard to cure. 
We excuse the partial failure of our characters 
on the ground of their general success. We can 
afford to be a little bad who are so good. A true 
logic would say we can only afford to be a little 
better. If the fly in the ointment is a very small 
fly, why have a very small fly? Temper is the 
vice of the virtuous. Christ's sermon on the 
" Elder brother " is evidently a sermon pointedly 
to the virtuous — not to make bad people good 
but to make good people perfect. 

Passing now from the nature and relations of 
sins of this peculiar class, we come briefly to look 
at their effects. And these are of two kinds — 
the influence of temper on the intellect, and on 
the moral and religious nature. 

With reference to the first, it has sometimes 
been taken for granted that a bad temper is a 
positive acquisition to the intellect. Its fieriness 
is supposed to communicate combustion to sur- 
rounding faculties, and to kindle the system into 
intense and vigorous life. " A man, when ex- 
cessively jaded," says Darwin, " will sometimes 
invent imaginary offences, and put himself into 
a passion unconsciously, for the sake of re-invig- 
orating himself." Now, of course, passion has 
its legitimate place in human nature, and when 



ILL-TEMPER 55 

really controlled, instead of controlling, becomes 
the most powerful stimulus to the intellectual 
faculties. Thus it is this to which Luther refers 
when he says, " I never work better than when I 
am inspired by anger. When I am angry, I 
can write, pray, and preach well; for then my 
whole temperament is quickened, my understand- 
ing sharpened, and all mundane vexations and 
temptations depart." 

The point, however, at which temper inter- 
feres with the intellect is in all matters of judg- 
ment. A quick temper really incapacitates for 
sound judgment. Decisions are struck off at a 
white heat, without time to collect grounds or 
hear explanations. Then it takes a humbler 
spirit than most of us possess to reverse them 
when once they are made. We ourselves are 
prejudiced in their favour simply because we 
have made them, and subsequent courses must 
generally do homage to our first precipitancy. 
No doubt the elder brother secretly confessed 
himself a fool the moment after his back was 
turned on the door. But he had taken his stand ; 
he had said, "I will not go in," and neither his 
father's entreaties nor his own sense of the grow- 
ing absurdity of the situation — think of the man 
standing outside his own door — were able to 
shake him. Temptation betraying a man into 
an immature judgment, that quickly followed by 
an irrelevant action, and the whole having to he 
defended by subsequent conduct, after making 



56 ILL-TEMPER 

such a fuss about it — such is the natural history 
on the side of intellect of a sin of temper. 

Amongst the scum left behind by such an 
action, apart from the consequences to the indi- 
vidual are results always disastrous to others. 
For this is another peculiarity of sins of temper, 
that their worst influence is upon others. It is 
generally, too, the weak who are the sufferers; 
for temper is the prerogative of superiors, and 
inferiors, down to the bottom of the scale, have 
not only to bear the brunt of the storm, but to 
sink their own judgment and spend their lives 
in ministering to what they know to be caprice. 
So their whole training is systematically false, 
and their own mental habits become disorganised 
and ruined. When the young, again, are dis- 
ciplined by the iron instead of on the golden 
rule, the consequences are still more fatal. They 
feel that they do not get a fair hearing. Their 
case is summarily dismissed untried; and that 
sort of nursery lynch law to which they are con- 
stantly subjected carries with it no explanation 
of moral principles, muzzles legitimate feelings, 
and really inflicts a punishment infinitely more 
serious than is intended, in crushing out all 
sense of justice. 

But it is in their moral and social effects that 
the chief evil lies. It is astonishing how large 
a part of Christ's precepts is devoted solely to 
the inculcation of happiness. How much of His 
life, too, was spent simply in making people 



ILL-TEMPER 57 

happy! There was no word more often on His 
lips than "blessed," and it is recognised by Him 
as a distinct end in life, the end for this life, to 
secure the happiness of others. This simple 
grace, too, needs little equipment. Christ had 
little. One need scarcely even be happy one's 
self. Holiness, of course, is a greater word, 
but we cannot produce that in others. That 
is reserved for God Himself, but what is put 
in our power is happiness, and for that each 
man is his brothers keeper. Now society is an 
arrangement for producing and sustaining human 
happiness, and temper is an agent for thwart- 
ing and destroying it. Look at the parable for 
a moment, and see how the elder brother's 
wretched pettishness, explosion of temper, churl- 
ishness, spoiled the happiness of a whole 
circle. First, it certainly spoiled his own. How 
ashamed of himself he must have been when 
the fit was over, one can well guess. Yet these 
things are never so quickly over as they seem. 
Self-disgust and humiliation may come at once, 
but a good deal else within has to wait till the 
spirit is tuned again. For instance, prayer must 
wait. A man cannot pray till the sourness is 
out of his soul. He must first forgive his brother 
who trespassed against him before he can go to 
God to have his own trespasses forgiven. 

Then look at the effect on the father, or on 
the guests, or even on the servants — that scene 
outside had cast its miserable gloom on the entire 



58 ILL-TEMPER 

company. But there was one other who felt it 
with a tenfold keenness — the prodigal son. We 
can imagine the effect on him. This was home, 
was it ? Well, it was a pity he ever came. If 
this was to be the sort of thing, he had better 
go. Happier a thousand times among the swine 
than to endure the boorishness of his self-con- 
tained, self-righteous brother. Yes, we drive 
men from Christ's door many a time by our sorry 
entertainment. The Church is not spiritualised 
enough yet to entertain the world. We have no 
spiritual courtesies. We cultivate our faith and 
proclaim our hope, but forget that a greater than 
these is charity. Till men can say of us, "They 
suffer long and are kind, they are not easily pro- 
voked, do not behave themselves unseemly, bear 
all things, think no evil," we have no chance 
against the world. One repulsive Christian will 
drive away a score of prodigals. God's love 
for poor sinners is very wonderful, but God's 
patience with ill-natured saints is a deeper 
mystery. 

The worst of the misery caused by ill-temper 
is that it does no good. Some misery is bene- 
ficial, but this is gratuitous woe. Nothing in 
the world causes such rankling, abiding, unneces- 
sary and unblessed pain. And Christ's words, 
therefore, when He refers to the breach of the 
law of love are most severe. " If any man offend 
one of these little ones," He says, " it were better 
for him that a millstone were hanged about his 



ILL-TEMPER 59 

neck, and that he were cast into the depth of the 
sea. " That is to say, it is Christ's deliberate 
verdict that it is better not to live than not to 
love. 

In its ultimate nature Distemper is a sin 
against love. And however impossible it may 
be to realize that now, however we may condone 
it as a pardonable weakness or small infirmity, 
there is no greater sin. A sin against love is a 
sin against God, for God is love. He that sin- 
neth against love, sinneth against God. 

This tracing of the sin to its root now suggests 
this further topic — its cure. Christianity pro- 
fesses to cure anything. The process may be 
slow, the discipline may be severe, but it can be 
done. But is not temper a constitutional thing ? 
Is it not hereditary, a family failing, a matter of 
temperament, and can that be cured ? Yes, if 
there is anything in Christianity. If there is no 
provision for that, then Christianity stands con- 
victed of being unequal to human need. What 
course then did the father take, in the case before 
us, to pacify the angry passions of his ill-natured 
son ? Mark that he made no attempt in the first 
instance to reason with him. To do so is a 
common mistake, and utterly useless both with 
ourselves and others. We are perfectly convinced 
of the puerility of it all, but that does not help us 
in the least to mend it. The malady has its seat 
in the affections, and therefore the father went 
there at once. Reason came in its place, and the 



6o ILL-TEMPER 

son was supplied with valid arguments — stated in 
the last verse of the chapter — against his con- 
duct, but he was first plied with Love. 

" Son," said the father, " thou art ever with me, 
and all that I have is thine." Analyse these 
words, and underneath them you will find the 
rallying cries of all great communities. There 
lie Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity — the happy 
symbols with which men have sought to maintain 
governments and establish kingdoms. " Son " — 
there is Liberty. " Thou art ever with me " — 
there is Unity, Fraternity. " All that I have is 
thine " — there is Equality. If any appeal could 
rouse a man to give up himself, to abandon selfish 
ends, under the strong throb of a common sym- 
pathy, it is this formula of the Christian Republic. 
Take the last, Equality, alone — " All that I have 
is thine." It is absurd to talk of your rights here 
and your rights there. You have all rights. " All 
that I have is thine." There is no room for self- 
ishness if there is nothing more that one can 
possess. And God has made the Equality. God 
has given us all, and if the memory of His great 
kindness, His particular kindness to us, be once 
moved within, the heart must melt to Him, and 
flow out to all mankind as brothers. 

It is quite idle, by force of will, to seek to 
empty the angry passions out of our life. Who 
has not made a thousand resolutions in this direc- 
tion, only and with unutterable mortification to 
behold them dashed to pieces with the first temp- 



ILL-TEMPER 61 

tation ? The soul is to be made sweet not by- 
taking the acidulous fluids out, but by putting 
something in — a great love, God's great love. 
This is to work a chemical change upon them, to 
renovate and regenerate them, to dissolve them 
in its own rich fragrant substance. If a man let 
this into his life, his cure is complete ; if not, it is 
hopeless. 

The character most hard to comprehend in the 
New Testament is the unmerciful servant. For 
his base extravagance his wife and children were 
to be sold, and himself imprisoned. He cries for 
mercy on his knees, and the 10,000 talents, hope- 
less and enormous debt, is freely cancelled. He 
goes straight from the kind presence of his lord, 
and, meeting some poor wretch who owes him a 
hundred pence, seizes him by the throat and hales 
him to the prison-cell, from which he himself had 
just escaped. How a man can rise from his 
knees, where, forgiven much already, he has just 
been forgiven more, and go straight from the 
audience chamber of his God to speak hard words 
and do hard things, is all but incredible. This 
servant truly in wasting his master's money must 
have wasted away his own soul. But grant a man 
any soul at all, love must follow forgiveness. 

Being forgiven much, he must love much, not 
as a duty, but as a necessary consequence; he 
must become a humbler, tenderer man, generous 
and brotherly. Rooted and grounded in love, his 
love will grow till it embraces the earth. Then 



62 ILL-TEMPER 

only he dimly begins to understand his father's 
gift — " All that I have is thine." The world is 
his : he cannot injure his own. The ground of 
benevolence is proprietorship. And all who love 
God are the proprietors of the world. The meek 
inherit the earth — all that He has is theirs. All 
that God has — what is that? Mountain and 
field, tree and sky, castle and cottage, white man, 
black man, genius and dullard, prisoner and pau- 
per, sick and aged — all these are mine. If noble 
and happy, I must enjoy them; if great and 
beautiful, I must delight in them ; if poor and 
hungry, I must clothe them; if sick and in 
prison, I must visit them. For they are all mine, 
all these, and all that God has beside, and I must 
love all and give myself for all. 

Here the theme widens. From Plato to Her- 
bert Spencer reformers have toiled to frame new 
schemes of Sociology. There is none so grand 
as the Sociology of Jesus. But we have not 
found out the New Testament Sociology yet; 
we have spent the centuries over its theology. 
Surely man's relation to God may be held as 
settled now. It is time to take up the other prob- 
lem, man's relation to man. With a former the- 
ology, man as man, as a human being, was of no 
account. He was a mere theological unit, the 
x of doctrine, an unknown quantity. He was 
taught to believe, therefore, not to love. Now 
we are learning slowly that to believe is to love ; 
that the first commandment is to love God, and 



ILL-TEMPER 63 

the second like unto it — another version of it — 
is to love man. Not only the happiness but the 
efficiency of the passive virtues, love as a power, 
as a practical success in the world, is coming to 
be recognised. The fact that Christ led no army, 
that He wrote no book, built no church, spent no 
money, but that He loved, and so conquered, this 
is beginning to strike men. And Paul's argu- 
ment is gaining adherents, that when all prophe- 
cies are fulfilled, and all our knowledge becomes 
obsolete, and all tongues grow unintelligible, this 
thing, Love, will abide and see them all out one 
by one into the oblivious past. This is the hope 
for the world that we shall learn to love, and in 
learning that, unlearn all anger and wrath and 
evil-speaking and malice and bitterness. 

And this will indeed be the world's future. 
This is heaven. The curtain drops on the story 
of the prodigal, leaving him in> but the elder 
brother out. And why is obvious. It is impos- 
sible for such a man to be in heaven. He would 
spoil heaven for all who were there. Except 
such a man be born again he cannot enter the 
kingdom of God. To get to heaven we must take 
it in with us. 

There are many heavens in the world even 
now from which we all shut ourselves out by our 
own exclusiveness — heavens of friendship, of 
family life, of Christian work, of benevolent min- 
istrations to the poor and ignorant and distressed. 
Because of some personal pique, some disap- 



64 ILL-TEMPER 

proval of methods, because the lines of work of 
some of the workers are not exactly to our taste, 
we play the elder brother, we are angry and will 
not go in. This is the naked truth of it, we are 
simply angry and will not go in. And this bears, 
if we could see it, its own worst penalty; for 
there is no severer punishment than just to be left 
outside, perhaps, to grow old alone, unripe, love- 
less and unloved. We are angry and will not go 
in. All sins mar God's image, but sins of temper 
mar God's image and God's work and man's 
happiness. 



NUMBER II 

Why Christ must 
Depart 

A SERMON BEFORE 
COMMUNION 

"// is expedient for you that I go away" — John xvi. 7. 

IT was on a communion night like this that the 
words were spoken. They fell upon the 
disciples like a thunderbolt startling a summer 
sky. Three and thirty years He had lived among 
them. They had lately learned to love Him. 
Day after day they had shared together the sun- 
shine and the storm, and their hearts clung to 
Him with a strange tenderness. And just when 
everything was at its height, when their friendship 
was now pledged indissolubly in the first most 
solemn sacrament, the unexpected words come, 
" I must say good-bye ; it is expedient for you 
that I go away." It was a crushing blow to the 
little band. They had staked their all upon that 
love. They had given up home, business, friends, 
and promised to follow Him. And now He says, 
" I must go ! " 

Let us see what He means by it. The words 
may help us to understand more fully our own 
relations with Him now that He is gone. 

5 



66 WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 

I. The first thing to strike one is the way Jesus 
took to break the news. It was characteristic. 
His sayings and doings always came about in the 
most natural way. Even His profoundest state- 
ments of doctrine were invariably apropos of some 
often trivial circumstance happening in the day's 
round. So now He did not suddenly deliver 
Himself of the doctrine of the Ascension. It 
leaked out as it were in the ordinary course of 
things. 

The supper was over; but the friends had 
much to say to one another that night, and they 
lingered long around the table. They did not 
know it was the last supper, never dreamed of it; 
but there had been an unusual sweetness in their 
intercourse, and they talked on and on. The 
hour grew late, but John still leaned on his 
Master's breast, and the others, grouped round 
in the twilight, drank in the solemn gladness of 
the communion evening. Suddenly a shadow 
falls over this scene. A sinister figure rises 
stealthily, takes the bag, and makes for the door 
unobserved. Jesus calls him : hands him the sop. 
The spell is broken. A terrible revulsion of 
feeling comes over Him — as if a stab in the 
dark had struck into His heart. He cannot go 
on now. It is useless to try. He cannot keep 
up the perhaps forced spirits. 

" Little children," He says very solemnly, His 
voice choking, " yet a little while I am with you." 
And " Whither I go ye cannot come." 



WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 67 

The hour is late. They think He is getting 
tired. He means to retire to rest. But Peter 
asks straight out, "Lord, whither goest Thou?" 
Into the garden? Back to Galilee? It never 
occurred to one of them that He meant the 
Unknown Land. 

"Whither I go," He replies a second time, 
"ye cannot follow Me now, but ye shall follow 
Me afterward" Afterward! The blow slowly 
falls. In a dim, bewildering way it begins to 
dawn upon them. It is separation. 

We can judge of the effect from the next sen- 
tence, "Let not your heart be troubled," He 
says. He sees their panic and consternation, 
and doctrine has to stand aside till experimental 
religion has ministered. And then it is only 
at intervals that He gets back to it ; every sen- 
tence almost is interrupted. Questionings and 
misgivings are started, explanations are insisted 
on, but the terrible truth will not hide. He 
always comes back to that — He will not temper 
its meaning, He still insists that it is absolute, 
literal; and finally He states it in its most bare 
and naked form, " It is expedient for you that I 
go away." 

II. Notice His reasons for going away. Why 
did Jesus go away? We all remember a time 
when we could not answer that question. We 
wished He had stayed, and had been here now. 
The children's hymn expresses a real human 
feeling, and our hearts burn still as we read it: 



68 WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 

" I think, when I read that sweet story of old, 
How Jesus was here among men, 
He called little children like lambs to His fold, 
I should like to have been with Him then. 

" I wish that His hands had been placed on my head, 
That His arms had been thrown around me, 
And that I might have seen His kind look as He said, 
* Let the little ones come unto Me.' " 

Jesus must have had reasons for disappointing 
a human feeling so deep, so universal, and so 
sacred. We may be sure, too, that these reasons 
intimately concern us. He did not go away be- 
cause He was tired. It was quite true that He 
was despised and rejected of men; it was quite 
true that the pitiless world hated and spurned 
and trod on Him. But that did not drive Him 
away. It was quite true that He longed for His 
Father's house and pined and yearned for His 
love. But that did not draw Him away. No. 
He never thought of Himself. It is expedient 
for you, He says, not for Me, that I go. 

I. The first reason is one of His own stating. 
" I go away to prepare a place for you. " And the 
very naming of this is a proof of Christ's con- 
siderateness. The burning question with every 
man who thought about his life in those days 
was, Whither is this life leading? The present, 
alas ! was dim and inscrutable enough, but the 
future was a fearful and unsolved mystery. So 
Christ put that right before He went away. He 
gave this unknown future form and colour. He 



WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 69 

told us — and it is only because we are so accus- 
tomed to it that we do not wonder more at the 
magnificence of the conception — that when our 
place in this world should know us no more there 
would be another place ready for us. We do not 
know much about that place, but the best thing 
we do know, that He prepares it. Eye hath not 
seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the 
heart of man what the Lord went away to pre- 
pare for them that love Him. It is better to 
think of this, to let our thoughts rest on this, 
that He prepares it, than to fancy details of our 
own. 

But that does not exhaust the matter. Con- 
sider the alternative. If Christ had not gone 
away, what then ? We should not either. The 
circumstances of our future life depended upon 
Christ's going away to prepare them; but the 
fact of our going away at all depended on His 
going away. We could not follow Him here- 
after, as He said we should, unless He led first. 
He had to be the Resurrection and the Life. 

And this was part of the preparing a place for 
us — the preparing a way for us. He prepared 
a place for us by the way He took to prepare a 
place. It was a very wonderful way. 

In a lonely valley in Switzerland a small band 
of patriots once marched against an invading 
force ten times their strength. They found 
themselves one day at the head of a narrow pass, 
confronted by a solid wall of spears. They 



yo WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 

made assault after assault, but that bristling line 
remained unbroken. Time after time they were 
driven back decimated with hopeless slaughter. 
The forlorn hope rallied for the last time. As 
they charged, their leader suddenly advanced 
before them with outstretched arms, and every 
spear for three or four yards of the line was 
buried in his body. He fell dead. But he pre- 
pared a place for his followers. Through the 
open breach, over his dead body, they rushed to 
victory and won the freedom of their country. 

So the Lord Jesus went before His people, the 
Captain of our salvation, sheathing the weapons 
of death and judgment in Himself, and prepar- 
ing a place for us with His dead body. Well 
for us not only that He went away, but that He 
went by way of the Cross. 

2. Another reason why He went away was to 
be very near. It seems a paradox, but He went 
away really in order to be near. Suppose, again, 
He had not gone away; suppose He were here 
now. Suppose He were still in the Holy Land, 
at Jerusalem. Every ship that started for the 
East would be crowded with Christian pilgrims. 
Every train flying through Europe would be 
thronged with people going to see Jesus. Every 
mail-bag would be full of letters from those in 
difficulty and trial, and gifts of homage to mani- 
fest men's gratitude and love. You yourself, 
let us say, are in one of those ships. The port, 
when you arrive after the long voyage, is blocked 



WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 71 

with vessels of every flag. With much difficulty 
you land, and join one of the long trains start- 
ing for Jerusalem. Far as the eye can reach, 
the caravans move over the desert in an endless 
stream. You do not mind the scorching sun, 
the choking dust, the elbowing crowds, the burn- 
ing sands. You are in the Holy Land, and you 
will see Jesus ! Yonder, at last, in the far dis- 
tance, are the glittering spires of the Holy Hill, 
above all the burnished temple dome beneath 
which He sits. But what is that dark seething 
mass stretching for leagues and leagues between 
you and the Holy City? They have come from 
the north and from the south, and from the east 
and from the west, as you have, to look upon 
their Lord. They wish 

" That His hands might be placed on their head ; 
That His arms might be thrown around them." 

But it cannot be You have come to see Jesus, 
but you will not see Him. They have been there 
weeks, months, years, and have not seen Him. 
They are a yard or two nearer, and that is all. 
The thing is impossible. It is an anti-climax, 
an absurdity. It would be a social outrage; it 
would be a physical impossibility. 

Now Christ foresaw all this when He said it was 
expedient that He should go away. Observe He 
did not say it was necessary — it was expedient. 
The objection to the opposite plan was simply 
that it would not have worked. So He says to 



72 WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 

you, " It is very kind and earnest of you to come 
so far, but you mistake. Go away back from the 
walls of the Holy City, over the sea, and you will 
find Me in your own home. You will find Me 
where the shepherds found Me, doing their ordi- 
nary work ; where the woman of Samaria found 
Me, drawing the water for the forenoon meal; 
where the disciples found Me, mending nets in 
their working clothes; where Mary found Me, 
among the commonplace household duties of a 
country village. " What would religion be, indeed, 
if the soul-sick had to take their turn like the out- 
patients waiting at the poor-hour outside the in- 
firmary? How would it be with the old who were 
too frail to travel to Him, or the poor who could 
not afford it? How would it be with the blind, 
who could not see Him ; or the deaf, who could 
not hear Him? It would be physically impos- 
sible for millions to obey the Lord's command, 
" Come unto Me, and I will give you rest. " 

For their sakes it was expedient that He should 
go away. It was a great blessing for the world 
that He went. Access to Him is universally com- 
plete from every corner of every home in every 
part of the world. For the poor can have Him 
always with them. The soul-sick cannot be out 
of reach of the Physician. The blind can see His 
beauty now that He has gone away. The deaf 
hear His voice when all others are silent, and the 
dumb can pray when they cannot speak. 

Yes, the visible Incarnation must of necessity 



WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 73 

be brief. Only a small circle could enjoy His 
actual presence, but a kingdom like Christianity 
needed a risen Lord. It was expedient for the 
whole body of its subjects that He went away. 
He would be nearer man by being apparently 
further. The limitations of sense subjected Him 
while He stayed. He was subject to geography, 
locality, space, and time. But by going away He 
was in a spaceless land, in a timeless eternity, 
able to be with all men always even unto the end 
of the world. 

3. Another reason why He went away — al- 
though this is also a paradox — was that we might 
see Him better. When a friend is with us we do 
not really see him so well as when he is away. 
We only see points, details. It is like looking at 
a great mountain : you see it best a little way off. 
Clamber up the flanks of Mont Blanc, you see 
very little, — a few rocks, a pine or two, a blind- 
ing waste of snow ; but come down into the Val- 
ley of Chamounix and there the monarch dawns 
upon you in all his majesty. 

Christ is the most gigantic figure of history. 
To take in His full proportions one must be 
both near and away. The same is true of all 
greatness. Of all great poets, philosophers, poli- 
ticians, men of science, it is said that their gen- 
eration never knew them. They dawn upon us 
as time rolls past. Then their life comes out in 
its true perspective, and the symmetry of their 
work is revealed. We never know our friends, 



74 WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 

likewise, till we lose them. We often never know 
the beauty of a life which is lived very near our 
own till the hand of death has taken it away. It 
was expedient for us, therefore, that He should 
go — that we might see the colossal greatness of 
His stature, appreciate the loftiness and massive- 
ness of His whole character, and feel the perfect 
beauty and oneness of His life and work. 

4. Still another reason. He went away that 
we might walk by faith. After all, if He had 
stayed, with all its inconveniences, we should 
have been walking by sight. And this is the 
very thing religion is continually trying to undo. 
The strongest temptation to every man is to 
guide himself by what he can see, and feel, and 
handle. This is the core of Ritualism, the foun- 
dation of Roman Catholicism, the essence of 
idolatry. Men want to see God, therefore they 
make images of Him. We do not laugh at Ritu- 
alism ; it is intensely human. It is not so much 
a sin of presumption; it is a sin of mistake. It 
is a trying to undo the going away of Christ. It 
is a trying to make believe that He is still here. 
And the fatal fallacy of it is that it defeats its 
own end. He who seeks God in tangible form 
misses the very thing he is seeking, for God is a 
Spirit. The desire burns within him to see God ; 
the desire is given him to make him spiritual, by 
giving him a spiritual exercise to do; and he 
cheats himself by exercising the flesh instead of 
the spirit. Hunger and thirst after God are an 



WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 75 

endowment to raise us out of the seen and tem- 
poral. But instead of letting the spiritual appe- 
tite elevate us into the spirit, we are apt to 
degrade the very instrument of our spiritualisa- 
tion and make it minister to the flesh. 

It was expedient in order that the disciples 
should be spiritualised that Jesus should become 
a Spirit. Life in the body to all men is short. 
The mortal dies and puts on immortality. So 
Christ's great aim is to strengthen the after-life. 
Therefore He gave exercises in faith to be the 
education for immortality. Therefore Jesus went 
away to strengthen the spirit for eternity. 

It is not because there is any deep, mysterious 
value in faith itself that it plays so great a part in 
religion. It is not because God arbitrarily chooses 
that we should walk by faith rather than by sight. 
It is because it is essential to our future ; it is be- 
cause this is the faculty which of all others is 
absolutely necessary to life in the spirit. 

For our true life will be lived in the spirit. In 
the hereafter there will be nothing carnal. Christ 
is therefore solicitous to educate our faith, for 
sight will be useless. There will be no eye, no 
pupil, no retina, no optic nerve in the hereafter, 
so faith is the spiritual substitute for them which 
Christ would develop in us by going away. 

5. But the great reason has yet to be mentioned. 
He went away that the Comforter might come. 

We have seen how His going away was a pro- 
vision for the future life. The absent Lord pre- 



76 WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 

pares a place there; the absent object of faith 
educates the souls of the faithful to possess and 
enjoy it. But He provides for the life that now 
is. And His going away has to do with the 
present as much as with the life to come. One 
day when Jesus was in Perea, a message came to 
Him that a very dear friend was sick. He lived in 
a distant village with his two sisters. They were 
greatly concerned about their brother's illness, 
and had sent in haste for Jesus. Now Jesus loved 
Mary and Martha and Lazarus their brother ; but 
He was so situated at the time that He could not 
go. Perhaps He was too busy, perhaps He had 
other similar cases on hand; at all events, He 
could not go. When He went ultimately, it was 
too late. Hour after hour the sisters waited for 
Him. They could not believe He would not 
come; but the slow hours dragged themselves 
along by the dying man's couch, and he was 
dead and laid in the grave before Jesus arrived. 
You can imagine one of His thoughts, at least, as 
He stands and weeps by that grave with the in- 
consolable sisters : " It is expedient that I go away. 
I should have been present at his death-bed scene 
if I had been away. I will depart and send the 
Comforter. There will be no summons of sorrow 
which He will not be able to answer. He will 
abide with men for ever. Everywhere He will 
come and go. He will be like the noiseless, in- 
visible wind blowing all over the world where- 
soever He listeth." 



WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 77 

The doctrine of the Holy Ghost is very simple. 
Men stumble over it because they imagine it to 
be something very mysterious and unintelligible. 
But the whole matter lies here. Our text is the 
key to it. The Holy Spirit is just what Christ 
would have been had He been here. He minis- 
ters comfort just as Christ would have done — 
only without the inconveniences of circumstance, 
without the restriction of space, without the limi- 
tations of time. More: we need a personal 
Christ, but we cannot get it, at least we cannot 
each get it. So the only alternative is a spiritual 
Christ, i. e. a Holy Spirit, and then we can all get 
Him. He reproves the world of sin, of righteous- 
ness, and of judgment. Christ had to go away to 
make room for a person of the Trinity who could 
deal with the world. He himself could only re- 
prove the individual of sin, of righteousness, and 
of judgment. But work on a larger scale is done 
now that He is gone. This is what He refers to 
when He said, " Greater works than these shall 
ye do." 

And yet Christ did not go away that the Spirit 
might take His place. Christ is with us Himself. 
He is with us and yet He is not with us ; that is, 
He is w r ith us by His spirit. The Spirit does not 
reveal the Spirit. He speaks not of Himself, He 
reveals Christ. He is the nexus, the connection 
between the absent Christ and the world — a 
spiritual presence which can penetrate where the 
present Christ could not go. It was expedient 



78 WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 

for the present Christ to go away that the uni- 
versal Christ might come to all. 

Finally, if all this was expedient for us, this 
strange relation of Jesus to His people ought to 
have a startling influence upon our life. Expedi- 
ency is a practical thing. It was a terrible risk 
going away. Has the expedient which Christ 
adopted been worth while to you and me ? 
These three great practical effects at least are 
obvious. 

(i) Christ ought to be as near to us as if He 
were still here. Nothing so simplifies the whole 
religious life as this thought. A present, personal 
Christ solves every difficulty, and meets every 
requirement of Christian experience. There is a 
historical Christ, a national Christ, a theological 
Christ — we each w r ant Christ. So we have Him. 
For purposes of expediency, for a little while, 
He has become invisible. It is our part to have 
Him. 

" More present to Faith's vision keen 

Than any other vision seen ; 

More near, more intimately nigh 

Than any other earthly tie." 

(2) Then consider what an incentive to honest 
faithfulness this is. The kingdom of Heaven is 
like a man travelling into a far country. And 
before he went he called his servants and gave to 
every man his work. 

Are we doing it faithfully ? Are we doing it 
at all ? The visible eye of the Master is off us. 



WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 79 

No one inspects our work. Wood, hay, stubble, 
no man knows. It is the test of the absent 
Christ. He is training us to a kind of faithful- 
ness whose high quality is unattained by any 
other earthly means. It was after the Lord was 
gone that the disciples worked. They grew fast 
after this — in vigour, in usefulness, in reliance, in 
strength of character. Hitherto they had rested 
in His love. Did you ever think what a risk it 
was for Him to go away ? It was a terrible risk 
— to leave us here all by ourselves. And yet this 
was one of His ways of elevating us. There is 
nothing exalts a man like confidence put in him. 
So He went away and let them try themselves. 

We cannot always sit at the communion table. 
We partake of the feast not so much as a luxury, 
though it is that, but to give us strength to work. 
We think our Sabbath services, our prayers, our 
Bible reading, are our religion. It is not so. We 
do these things to help us to be religious in other 
things. These are the mere meals, and a work- 
man gets no wages for his meals. It is for the 
work he does. The value of this communion is 
not estimated yet. It will take the coming week 
to put the value upon it. In itself it counts little ; 
we shall see what it is, by what we shall be. 

Every communicant is left by Christ with a 
solemn responsibility. Christ's confidence in us 
is unspeakably touching. Christ was sure of us ; 
He felt the world was safe in our hands. He 
was away, but we would be Christs to it; the 



80 WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 

Light of the World was gone, but he would light 
a thousand lights, and leave each of us as one 
to illuminate one corner of its gloom. 

(3) Lastly, He has only gone for a little 
while : " Behold, I come quickly." The proba- 
tion will soon be past. " Be good children till I 
come back," He has said, like a mother leaving 
her little ones, " and I will come again, and 
receive you unto Myself, that where I am, ye 
may be also." So we wait till He come again — 
we wait till it is expedient for Him to come back. 

" So I am waiting quietly every day, 
Whenever the sun shines brightly, I rise and say, i Surely 

it is the shining of His face ; ' 
And when a shadow falls across the window of the room 
Where I am working my appointed task, 
I lift my head and ask if He is come." 



NUMBER III 

Going to the 
Father 

WRITTEN AFTER THE 
DEATH OF A FRIEND 

" I go to my Father" — John xiv. 12. 

YOU can unlock a man's whole life if you 
watch what words he uses most. We have 
each a small set of words, which, though we are 
scarce aware of it, we always work with, and 
which really express all that we mean by life, or 
have found out of it. For such words embalm 
the past for us. They have become ours by a 
natural selection throughout our career of all 
that is richest and deepest in our experience. 
So our vocabulary is our history, and our favour- 
ite words are ourselves. 

Did you ever notice Christ's favourite words? 
If you have, you must have been struck by two 
things — their simplicity and their fewness. Some 
half-dozen words embalm all His theology, and 
these are, without exception, humble, elementary, 
simple monosyllables. They are such words as 
these : world, life, trust, love. 

But none* of these was the greatest word of 
Christ. His great word was new to religion. 
6 



82 GOING TO THE FATHER 

There was no word there, when He came, rich 
enough to carry the new truth He was bringing 
to men. So He imported into religion one of the 
grandest words of human language, and trans- 
figured it, and gave it back to the world illumi- 
nated and transformed, as the watchword of the 
new religion. That word was Father. 

The world's obligation to the Lord Jesus is 
that He gave us that word. We should never 
have thought of it; if we had, we should never 
have dared to say it. It is a pure revelation. 
Surely it is the most touching sight of the world's 
past to see God's only begotten Son coming down 
from heaven to try to teach the stammering dumb 
inhabitants of this poor planet to say, " Our 
Father." 

It is that word which has gathered the great 
family of God together ; and when we come face 
to face with the real, the solid, and the moving in 
our religion, it is to find all its complexity resolv- 
able into this simplicity, that God, whom others 
call King Eternal, Infinite Jehovah, is, after all, 
our Father, and we are His children. 

This, after all, is religion. And to live daily in 
this simplicity, is to live like Christ. 

It takes a great deal to succeed as a Christian 
— such a great deal, that not many do succeed. 
And the great reason for want of success is the 
want of a central word. Men will copy anything 
rather than a principle. A relationship is always 
harder to follow than a fact. We study the de- 



GOING TO THE FATHER 83 

tails of Christ's actions, the point of this miracle 
and of that, the circumferential truth of this 
parable and of that, but to copy details is not to 
copy Christ. To live greatly like Christ is not to 
agonise daily over details, to make anxious com- 
parisons with what we do and what He did, but a 
much more simple thing. It is to re-echo Christ's 
word. It is to have that calm, patient, assured 
spirit, which reduces life simply to this — a going 
to the Father. 

Not one man in a hundred, probably, has a 
central word in his Christian life; and the con- 
sequence is this, that there is probably nothing 
in the world so disorderly and slipshod as per- 
sonal spiritual experience. With most of us it 
is a thing without stability or permanence, it is 
changed by every trifle we meet, by each new 
mood or thought. It is a series of disconnected 
approaches to God, a disorderly succession of 
religious impulses, an irregulation of conduct, 
now on this principle, now on that, one day 
because we read something in a book, the next 
because it was contradicted in another. And 
when circumstances lead us really to examine 
ourselves, everything is indefinite, hazy, unsat- 
isfactory, and all that we have for the Christian 
life are the shreds perhaps of the last few Sab- 
baths' sermons and a few borrowed patches from 
other people's experience. So we live in per- 
petual spiritual oscillation and confusion, 
and we are almost glad to let any friend or any 



84 GOING TO THE FATHER 

book upset the most cherished thought we 
have. 

Now the thing which steadied Christ's life 
was the thought that He was going to His 
Father. This one thing gave it unity, and har- 
mony, and success. During His whole life He 
never forgot His Word for a moment. There is 
no sermon of His where it does not occur; there 
is no prayer, however brief, where it is missed. 
In that first memorable sentence of His, which 
breaks the solemn spell of history and makes 
one word resound through thirty silent years, 
the one word is this ; and all through the after 
years of toil and travail "the Great Name" was 
always hovering on His lips, or bursting out of 
His heart. In its beginning and in its end, 
from the early time when He spoke of His 
Father's business till He finished the work that 
was given Him to do, His life, disrobed of all 
circumstance, w r as simply this, " I go to My 
Father." 

If we take this principle into our own lives, 
we shall find its influence tell upon us in three 
ways: 

I. It explains Life. 

II. It sustains Life. 

III. It completes Life. 

I. It explains Life. Few men, I suppose, do 
not feel that life needs explaining. We think 
we see through some things in it — partially; 
but most of it, even to the wisest mind, is enig- 



GOING TO THE FATHER 85 

matic. Those who know it best are the most 
bewildered by it, and they who stand upon the 
mere rim of the vortex confess that even for 
them it is overspread with cloud and shadow. 
What is my life? whither do I go? whence do 
I come? these are the questions which are not 
worn down yet, although the whole world has 
handled them. 

To these questions there are but three answers 
— one by the poet, the other by the atheist, the 
third by the Christian. 

{a) The poet tells us, and philosophy says the 
same only less intelligibly, that life is a sleep, a 
dream, a shadow. It is a vapour that appeareth 
for a little and vanisheth away ; a meteor hover- 
ing for a moment between two unknown eter- 
nities ; bubbles, which form and burst upon the 
river of time. This philosophy explains nothing. 
It is a taking refuge in mystery. Whither am 
I going ? Virtually the poet answers, " I am 
going to the Unknown. " 

{b) The atheist's answer is just the opposite. 
He knows no unknown. He understands all, 
for there is nothing more than we can see or 
feel. Life is what matter is; the soul is phos- 
phorus. Whither am I going? "I go to dust," 
he says; " death ends all. " And this explains 
nothing. It is worse than mystery. It is con- 
tradiction. It is utter darkness. 

(c) But the Christian's answer explains some- 
thing. Where is he going? "I go to my 



86 GOING TO THE FATHER 

Father. " This is not a definition of his death 
— there is no death in Christianity; it is a 
definition of the Christian life. All the time it 
is a going to the Father. Some travel swiftly, 
some are long upon the road, some meet many 
pleasant adventures by the way, others pass 
through fire and peril; but though the path be 
short or winding, and though the pace be quick 
or slow, it is a going to the Father. 

Now this explains life. It explains the two 
things in life which are most inexplicable. For 
one thing, it explains why there is more pain in 
the world than pleasure. God knows, although 
we scarce do, there is something better than 
pleasure — progress. Pleasure, mere . pleasure, 
is animal. He gives that to the butterfly. But 
progress is the law of life to the immortal. So 
God has arranged our life as progress, and its 
working principle is evolution. Not that there 
is no pleasure in it. The Father is too good to 
His children for that. But the shadows are all 
shot through it, for He fears lest we should for- 
get there is anything more. Yes, God is too 
good to leave His children without indulgences, 
without far more than we deserve; but He is- 
too good to let them spoil us. Our pleasures 
therefore are mere entertainments. We are enter- 
tained like passing guests at the inns on the 
roadside. Yet after even the choicest meals we 
dare not linger. We must take the pilgrim's 
staff again and go on our way to the Father. 



GOING TO THE FATHER 87 

Sooner or later we find out that life is not a 
holiday, but a discipline. Earlier or later we 
all discover that the world is not a playground. 
It is quite clear God means it for a school. The 
moment we forget that, the puzzle of life begins. 
We try to play in school ; the Master does not 
mind that so much for its own sake, for He likes 
to see His children happy, but in our playing 
we neglect our lessons. We do not see how 
much there is to learn, and we do not care. But 
our Master cares. He has a perfectly over- 
powering and inexplicable solicitude for our 
education; and because He loves us, He comes 
into the school sometimes and speaks to us. 
He may speak very softly and gently, or very 
loudly. Sometimes a look is enough, and we 
understand it, like Peter, and go out at once and 
weep bitterly. Sometimes the voice is like a 
thunder-clap startling a summer night. But one 
thing we maybe sure of: the 'task He sets us 
to is never measured by our delinquency. The 
discipline may seem far less than our desert, or 
even to our eye ten times more. But it is not 
measured by these — it is measured by God's 
solicitude for our progress ; measured solely by 
God's love; measured solely that the scholar 
may be better educated when he arrives at his 
Father. The discipline of life is a preparation 
for meeting the Father. When we arrive there 
to behold His beauty, we must have the educated 
eye ; and that must be trained here. We must 



88 GOING TO THE FATHER 

become so pure in heart — and it needs much 
practice — that we shall see God. That explains 
life — why God puts man in the crucible and 
makes him pure by fire. 

When we see Him, we must speak to Him. 
We have that language to learn. And that is 
perhaps why God makes us pray so much. Then 
we are to walk with Him in white. Our sancti- 
fication is a putting on this white. But there 
has to be much disrobing first; much putting 
off of filthy rags. This is why God makes man's 
beauty to consume away like the moth. He 
takes away the moth's wings, and gives the 
angel's, and man goes the quicker and the 
lovelier to the Father. 

It is quite true, indeed, besides all this, that 
sometimes shadow falls more directly from 
definite sin. But even then its explanation is 
the same. We lose our way, perhaps, on the 
way to the Father. The road is rough, and we 
choose the way with the flowers beside it, instead 
of the path of thorns. Often and often thus, 
purposely or carelessly, we lose the way. So 
the Lord Jesus has to come and look for us. 
And He may have to lead us through desert and 
danger, before we regain the road — before we 
are as we were — and the voice says to us sadly 
once more, " This is the way to the Father. " 

The other thing which this truth explains is, 
why there is so much that is unexplained. After 
we have explained all, there is much left. All 



GOING TO THE FATHER 89 

our knowledge, it is said, is but different degrees 
of darkness. But we know why we do not know 
why. It is because we are going to our Father. 
We are only going: we are not there yet. 
Therefore patience. " What I do thou knowest 
not now, but thou shalt know. Hereafter, thou 
shalt know." Hereafter, because the chief joy 
of life is to have something to look forward to. 
But, hereafter, for a deeper reason. Knowledge 
is only given for action. Knowing only exists 
for doing: and already nearly all men know to 
do more than they do do. So, till we do all that 
we know, God retains the balance till we can 
use it. In the larger life of the hereafter, more 
shall be given, proportionate to the vaster sphere 
and the more ardent energies. 

Necessarily, therefore, much of life is still twi- 
light. But our perfect refuge is to anticipate a 
little, and go in thought to our Father, and, like 
children tired out with efforts to put together 
the disturbed pieces of a puzzle, wait to take the 
fragments to our Father. 

And yet, even that fails sometimes. He seems 
to hide from us and the way is lost indeed. The 
footsteps which went before us up till then cease, 
and we are left in the chill, dark night alone. If 
we could only see the road, we should know it 
went to the Father. But we cannot say we are 
going to the Father ; we can only say we would 
like to go. " Lord," we cry, " we know not whither 
Thou goest, and how can we know the way?" 



90 GOING TO THE FATHER 

"Whither I go," is the inexplicable answer, u ye 
know not now." Well is it for those who at such 
times are near enough to catch the rest : " But 
ye shall know hereafter." 

II. Secondly, and in a few words, this sustains 
Life. 

A year or two ago some of the greatest and 
choicest minds of this country laboured, in the 
pages of one of our magazines, to answer the 
question, " Is Life worth living ? " It was a 
triumph for religion, some thought, that the 
keenest intellects of the nineteenth century should 
be stirred with themes like this. It was not so ; 
it was the surest proof of the utter heathenism of 
our age. Is Life worth living ? As well ask, Is 
air worth breathing ? The real question is this 
— taking the definition of life here suggested — 
Is it worth while going to the Father? 

Yet we can understand the question. On any 
other definition we can understand it. On any 
other definition life is very far from being worth 
living. Without that, life is worse than an 
enigma; it is an inquisition. Life is either a 
discipline, or a most horrid cruelty. Man's best 
aims here are persistently thwarted, his purest 
aspirations degraded, his intellect systematically 
insulted, his spirit of inquiry is crushed, his love 
mocked, and his hope stultified. There is no 
solution whatever to life without this; there is 
nothing to sustain either mind or soul amid its 
terrible mystery but this ; there is nothing even 



GOING TO THE FATHER 91 

to account for mind and soul. And it will always 
be a standing miracle that men of powerful in- 
tellect who survey life, who feel its pathos and 
bitterness, and are shut up all the time by their 
beliefs to impenetrable darkness — I say it will 
always be a standing miracle how such men, with 
the terrible unsolved problems all around them, 
can keep reason from reeling and tottering from 
its throne. If life is not a going to the Father, it 
is not only not worth living, it is an insult to the 
living; and it is one of the strangest mysteries 
how men who are large enough in one direction 
to ask that question, and too limited in another to 
answer it, should voluntarily continue to live at all. 

There is nothing to sustain life but this thought. 
And it does sustain life. Take even an extreme 
case, and you will see how. Take the darkest, 
saddest, most pathetic life of the world's history. 
That was Jesus Christ's. See what this truth 
practically was to Him. It gave Him a life of 
absolute composure in a career of most tragic trials. 

You have noticed often, and it is inexpressibly 
touching, how as His life narrows, and troubles 
thicken around Him, He leans more and more 
upon this. And when the last days draw near — 
as the memorable chapters in John reveal them 
to us — with what clinging tenderness He alludes 
in almost every second sentence to " My Father." 
There is a wistful eagerness in these closing words 
which is strangely melting — like one ending a 
letter at sea when land is coming into sight. 



92 GOING TO THE FATHER 

This is the Christian's only stay in life. It 
provides rest for his soul, work for his character, 
an object, an inconceivably sublime object, for 
his ambition. It does not stagger him to be a 
stranger here, to feel the world passing away. 
The Christian is like the pearl-diver, who is out 
of the sunshine for a little, spending his short 
day amid rocks and weeds and dangers at the 
bottom of the ocean. Does he desire to spend 
his life there? No, but his master does. Is his 
life there? No, his life is up above. A com- 
munication is open to the surface, and the fresh 
pure life comes down to him from God. Is he 
not wasting time there? He is gathering pearls 
for his Master's crown. Will he always stay 
there? When the last pearl is gathered, the 
" Come up higher " will beckon him away, and 
the weights which kept him down will become an 
exceeding weight of glory, and he will go, he and 
these he brings with him, to his Father. 

He feels, to change the metaphor, like a man 
in training for a race. It is months off still, but 
it is nearer him than to-morrow, nearer than any- 
thing else. Great things are always near things. 
So he lives in his future. Ask him why this 
deliberate abstinence from luxury in eating and 
drinking. " He is keeping his life," he says. 
Why this self-denial, this separation from worldli- 
ness, this change to a quiet life from revelries far 
into the night? " He is keeping his life." He 
cannot have both the future and the present ; and 



GOING TO THE FATHER 93 

he knows that every regulated hour, and every 
temptation scorned and set aside, is adding a 
nobler tissue to his frame and keeping his life for 
the prize that is to come. 

Trial to the Christian is training for eternity, 
and he is perfectly contented ; for he knows that 
" he who loveth his life in this world shall lose 
it ; but he that hateth his life in this world shall 
keep it unto life eternal." He is keeping his life 
till he gets to the Father. 

III. Lastly, in a word, this completes life. 

Life has been defined as a going to the Father. 
It is quite clear that there must come a time in 
the history of all those who live this life when 
they reach the Father. This is the most glorious 
moment of life. Angels attend at it. Those on 
the other side must hail the completing of another 
soul with ineffable rapture. When they are yet a 
great way off, the Father runs and falls on their 
neck and kisses them. 

On this side we call that Death. It means 
reaching the Father. It is not departure, it is 
arrival; not sleep, but waking. For life to 
those who live like Christ is not a funeral pro- 
cession. It is a triumphal march to the Father. 
And the entry at the last in God's own chariot 
in the last hour of all. No, as we watch a life 
which is going to the Father, we cannot think 
of night, of gloom, of dusk and sunset. It is 
life which is the night, and Death is sunrise. 

" Pray moderately," says an old saint, " for the 



94 GOING TO THE FATHER 

lives of Christ's people." Pray moderately. We 
may want them on our side, he means, but 
Christ may need them on His. He has seen 
them a great way off, and set His heart upon 
them, and asked the Father to make them come 
quickly. " I will," He says, "that such an one 
should be with Me where I am." So it is better 
that they should go to the Father. 

These words have a different emphasis to differ- 
ent persons. There are three classes to whom 
they come home with a peculiar emphasis : — 

1. They speak to those who are staying away 
from God. " I do not wonder at what men 
suffer," says Ruskin, " I wonder often at what 
they lose." My fellow pilgrim, you do not know 
what you are losing by not going to the Father. 
You live in an appalling mystery. You have 
nothing to explain your life nor to sustain it; 
no boundary line on the dim horizon to complete 
it. When life is done you are going to leap into 
the dark. You will cross the dark river and land 
on the further shore alone. No one will greet 
you. You and the Inhabitant of Eternity will 
be strangers. Will you not to-day arise and go 
to your Father? 

2. They speak, next, to all God's people. 
Let us remember that we are going to the 
Father. Even now are we the sons of God. 
Oh let us live like it — more simple, uncomplain- 
ing, useful, separate, joyful as those who march 
with music, yet sober as those who are to com- 



GOING TO THE FATHER 95 

pany with Christ. The road is heavy, high road 
and low road, but we shall soon be home. God 
grant us a sure arrival in our Father's house. 

3. And this voice whispers yet one more 
message to the mourning. Did Death end all ? 
Is it well with the child? It is well. The last 
inn by the roadside has been passed — that is 
all, and a voice called to us, " Good-bye ! I go 
to my Father." 



NUMBER IV 



The Eccentricity 
of Religion 



" They said, He is beside Himself" — Mark iii. 21. 

THE most pathetic life in the history of the 
world is the life of the Lord Jesus. Those 
who study it find out, every day, a fresh sorrow. 
Before He came it was already foretold that He 
would be acquainted with grief, but no imagination 
had ever conceived the darkness of the reality. 

It began with one of the bitterest kinds of sor- 
row — -the sorrow of an enforced silence. For 
thirty years He saw, but dared not act. The 
wrongs He came to redress were there. The 
hollowest religion ever known — a mere piece of 
acting — was being palmed off around Him on 
every side as the religion of the living God. 
He saw the poor trodden upon, the sick un- 
tended, the widow unavenged, His Father's peo- 
ple scattered, His truth misrepresented, and the 
whole earth filled with hypocrisy and violence. 
He saw this, grew up amongst it, knew how to 
cure it. Yet He was dumb, He opened not His 
mouth. How He held in His breaking spirit, till 



THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 97 

the slow years dragged themselves out, it is im- 
possible to comprehend. 

Then came the public life, the necessity to 
breathe its atmosphere : the temptation, the con- 
tradiction of sinners, the insults of the Pharisees, 
the attempts on His life, the dulness of His disci- 
ples, the Jews' rejection of Him, the apparent fail- 
ure of His cause, Gethsemane, Calvary. Yet these 
were but the more marked shades in the darkness 
which blackened the whole path of the Man of 
Sorrows. 

But we are confronted here with an episode in 
His life which is not included in any of these ; 
an episode which had a bitterness all its own, 
and such as has fallen to the lot of few to know. 
It was not the way the world treated Him ; it was 
not the Pharisees; it was not something which 
came from His enemies; it was something His 
friends did. When He left the carpenter's shop 
and went out into the wider life, His friends were 
watching Him. For some time back they had 
remarked a certain strangeness in His manner. 
He had always been strange among His brothers, 
but now this was growing upon Him. He has 
said much stranger things of late, made many 
strange plans, gone away on curious errands to 
strange places. What did it mean? Where was 
it to end? Were the family to be responsible for 
all this eccentricity? One sad day it culminated. 
It was quite clear to them now. He was not respon- 
sible for what He was doing. It was His mind, 

7 



98 THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 

alas ! that had become affected. He was beside 
Himself. In plain English, He was mad! 

An awful thing to say when it is true, a more 
awful thing when it is not ; a more awful thing 
still when the accusation comes from those we 
love, from those who know us best. It was the 
voice of no enemy, it came from His own home. 
It was His own mother, perhaps, and His brethren, 
who pointed this terrible finger at Him; apolo- 
gising for Him, entreating the people never to 
mind Him, He was beside Himself — He was 
mad. 

There should have been one spot surely upon 
God's earth for the Son of Man to lay His head 
— one roof, at least, in Nazareth, with mother's 
ministering hand and sister's love for the weary 
Worker. But His very home is closed to Him. 
He has to endure the furtive glances of eyes 
which once loved Him, the household watching 
Him and whispering one to another, the cruel 
suspicion, the laying hands upon Him, hands 
which were once kind to Him, and finally, the 
overwhelming announcement of the verdict of 
His family, " He is beside Himself." Truly He 
came to His own, and His own received Him 
not. 

What makes it seemly to dig up this harrow- 
ing memory to-day, and emphasise a thought 
which we cannot but feel lies on the borderland 
of blasphemy? Because the significance of that 
scene is still intense. It has a peculiar lesson 



THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 99 

for us who are to profess ourselves followers of 
Christ — a lesson in the counting of the cost. 
Christ's life, from first to last, was a dramatised 
parable — too short and too significant to allow 
even a scene which well might rest in solemn 
shadow to pass by unimproved. 

I. Observe, from the world's standpoint, the 
charge is true. It is useless to denounce this 
as a libel, a bitter, blasphemous calumny. It is 
not so — it is true. There was no alternative. 
Either He was the Christ, the Son of the living 
God, or He was beside Himself. A holy life is 
always a phenomenon. The world knoweth it 
not. It is either supernatural or morbid. 

For what is being beside oneself ? What is 
madness ? It is eccentricity — ec-centr-icity — 
having a different centre from other people. 
Here is a man, for instance, who devotes his 
life to collecting objects of antiquarian interest, 
old coins perhaps, or old editions of books. 
His centre is odd, his life revolves in an orbit 
of his own. Therefore, his friends say, he is 
eccentric. 

Or here is an engine with many moving wheels, 
large and small, cogged and plain, but each 
revolving upon a central axis, and describing a 
perfect circle. But at one side there is one 
small wheel which does not turn in a circle. 
Its motion is different from all the rest, and the 
changing curve it describes is unlike any ordi- 
nary line of the mathematician. The engineer 



ioo THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 

tells you that this is the eccentric, because it has 
a peculiar centre. 

Now when Jesus Christ came among men He 
found them nearly all revolving in one circle. 
There was but one centre to human life — self. 
Man's chief end was to glorify himself and en- 
joy himself for ever. Then, as now, by the all 
but unanimous consensus of the people, this 
present world was sanctioned as the legitimate 
object of all human interest and enterprise. 
By the whole gravitation of society, Jesus — as 
a man — must have been drawn to the very 
verge of this vast vortex of self-indulgence, 
personal ease and pleasure, which had sucked 
in the populations of the world since time be- 
gan. But he stepped back. He refused abso- 
lutely to be attracted. He put everything out 
of His life that had even a temptation in it to 
the world's centre. He humbled Himself — 
there is no place in the world's vortex for hum- 
bleness. He became of no reputation — nor for 
namelessness. He emptied Himself — gravitation 
cannot act on emptiness. So the prince of this 
world came, but found nothing in Him. He 
found nothing, because the true centre of that 
life was not to be seen. It was with God. The 
unseen and the eternal moved Him. He did not 
seek His own happiness, but that of others. He 
went about doing good. His object in going 
about was not gain, but to do good. 

Now all this was very eccentric. It was living 



THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 101 

on new lines altogether. He did God's will. He 
pleased not Himself. His centre was to one 
side of self. He was beside Himself. From the 
world's view-point it was simply madness. 

Think of this idea of His, for instance, of start- 
ing out into life with so quixotic an idea as that 
of doing good ; the simplicity of the expectation 
that the world ever would become good ; this 
irrational talk about meat to eat that they knew 
not of, about living water; these extraordinary 
beatitudes, predicating sources of happiness 
which had never been heard of; these paradoxi- 
cal utterances of which He was so fond, such as 
that the way to find life was to lose it, and to lose 
life in this world was to keep it to life eternal. 
What could these be but mere hallucination and 
dreaming! It was inevitable that men should 
laugh and sneer at Him. He was unusual. He 
would not go with the multitude. And men 
were expected to go with the multitude. What 
the multitude thought, said, and did, were the 
right things to have thought, said, and done. 
And if any one thought, said, or did differently, 
his folly be on his own head, he was beside him- 
self, he was mad. 

II. Every man who lives like Christ produces 
the same reaction upon the world. This is an in- 
evitable consequence. What men said of Him, 
if we are true to Him, they will say of you and 
me. The servant is not above his master. If 
they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute 



102 THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 

you. A Christian must be different from other 
people. Time has not changed the essential dif- 
ference between the spirit of the world and the 
spirit of Christ. They are radically and eternally 
different. And from the world's standpoint still 
Christianity is eccentricity. For what, again, is 
Christianity? It is the projection into the world 
of these lines along which Christ lived. It is 
a duplicating in modern life of the spirit, the 
method, and the aims of Jesus, a following through 
the world the very footprints He left behind. 
And if these footprints were at right angles to 
the broad beaten track the world went along in 
His day, they will be so still. It is useless to say 
the distinction has broken down. These two 
roads are still at right angles. The day may be, 
when the path of righteousness shall be the glo- 
rious highway for all the earth. But it is not now. 
Christ did not expect it would be so. He made 
provision for the very opposite. He prepared 
His Church beforehand for the reception it would 
get in the world. He gave no hope that it would 
be an agreeable one. Light must conflict with 
darkness, truth with error. There is no sanc- 
tioned place in the world as yet for a life with 
God as its goal, and self-denial as its principle. 
Meekness must be victimised; spirituality must 
be misunderstood; true religion must be bur- 
lesqued. Holiness must make a strong ferment 
and reaction, in family or community, office or 
workshop, wherever it is introduced. " Think 



THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 103 

not that I am come to send peace on earth, I 
came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am 
come to set a man at variance against his father, 
and the daughter against her mother, and the 
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a 
man's foes [He might well say it] shall be they 
of his own household. " 

True religion is no milk-and-water experience. 
It is a fire. It is a sword. It is a burning, con- 
suming heat, which must radiate upon everything 
around. The change to the Christlike Life is so 
remarkable that when one really undergoes it, he 
cannot find words in common use by which he 
can describe its revolutionary character. He has 
to recall the very striking phrases of the New Tes- 
tament, which once seemed such exaggerations : 
" A new man, a new creature; a new heart, a new 
birth!' His very life has been taken down and 
re-crystallised round the new centre. He has 
been born again. 

The impression his friends receive from him 
now is the impression of eccentricity. The change 
is bound to strike them, for it is radical, central. 
They will call in unworthy motives to account for 
the difference ; they will say it is a mere tempo- 
rary fit, and will pass away. They will say he 
has shown a weakness which they did not expect 
from him, and try to banter him out of his novel 
views and stricter life. This, in its mildest form, 
is the modern equivalent of " He is beside him- 
self' And it cannot be helped. It is the legiti- 



104 THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 

mate reproach of the Cross. The words are hard, 
but not new. Has it not come down that long 
line of whom the world was not worthy? Its 
history, alas ! is well known. It fell on the first 
Christians in a painful and even vulgar form. 

The little Church had just begun to live. The 
disciples stood after the great day of Pentecost 
contemplating that first triumph of Chrises cause 
with unbounded joy. At last an impression had 
been made upon the world. The enterprise was 
going to succeed, and the whole earth would fill 
with God's glory. They little calculated the im- 
pression they made on the world was the impres- 
sion of their own ridiculousness. u What meaneth 
this?" the people asked. "It meant," the dis- 
ciples would have said, " that the Holy Ghost, 
who was to come in His name, was here, that 
God's grace was stirring the hearts of men and 
moving them to repent." The people had a dif- 
ferent answer. " These men," was the coarse 
reply, " are full of new wine." Not mad this 
time — they are intoxicated ! 

Time passed, and Paul tells us the charge was 
laid at his door. He had made that great speech 
in the hall of the Csesarean palace before Agrippa 
and Festus. He told them of the grace of God 
in his conversion, and closed with an eloquent 
confession of his Lord. What impression had he 
made upon his audience? The impression of a 
madman. " As he thus spake for himself, Festus 
said with a loud voice, ' Paul ! thou art beside 



THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 105 

thyself; much learning hath made thee mad.' " 
Poor Paul ! H.ow you feel for him when the cruel 
blow was struck. But there was no answer to it. 
From their view-point it was perfectly true. And 
so it has been with all saints to the present hour. 
It matters not if they speak like Paul, the words 
of soberness. It matters not if they are men of 
burning zeal like Xavier and Whitfield, men of 
calm spirit like Tersteegen and a Kempis, men 
of learning like Augustine, or of ordinary gifts 
like Wesley, — the effect of all saintly lives upon 
the world is the same. They are to the Jews a 
stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness. 

It is not simply working Christianity that is an 
offence. The whole spiritual life, to the natural 
man, is an eccentric thing. Take such a mani- 
festation, for instance, as Prayer. The scientific 
men of the day have examined it and pronounced 
it hallucination. Or take Public Prayer. A con- 
gregation of people with bowed heads, shut eyes, 
hushed voices, invoking, confessing, pleading, en- 
treating One who, though not seen, is said to see ? 
who, speaking not, is said to answer. There is no 
other name for this incantation from the world's 
standpoint than eccentricity, delusion, madness. 
We are not ashamed of the terms. They are the 
guarantee of quality. And all high quality in the 
world is subject to the same reproach. For we 
are discussing a universal principle. It applies 
to inventors, to discoverers, to philosophers, to 
poets, to all men who have been better or higher 



106 THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 

than their time. These men are never understood 
by their contemporaries. And if there are mar- 
tyrs of science, the centres of science being in 
this world, seen, demonstrated, known, how much 
more must there be martyrs for religion whose 
centre is beyond the reach of earthly eye? 

III. It follows from this, that the more active 
religion is, the more unpopular it must be. 

Christ's religion did not trouble His friends at 
first. For thirty years, at all events, they were 
content to put up with it. But as it grew in 
intensity they lost patience. When He called 
the twelve disciples, they gave Him up. His 
work went on, the world said nothing for some 
time. But as His career became aberrant more 
and more, the family feeling spread, gained 
universal ground. Even the most beautiful and 
tender words He uttered were quoted in evidence 
of His state. For John tells us that after that 
exquisite discourse in the tenth chapter about 
the Good Shepherd, there was a division among 
the Jews for these sayings: "And many of them 
said, He hath a devil and is mad. Why hear ye 
Him?" It seemed utter raving. 

Have you ever noticed — and there is nothing 
more touching in history — how Christ's path 
narrowed ? 

The first great active period is called in books 
The year of public favour. On the whole it was 
a year of triumph. The world received Him for a 
time. Vast crowds followed Him. The Baptist's 



THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 107 

audience left him and gathered round the new 
voice. Palestine rang with ttie name of Jesus. 
Noblemen, rulers, rabbis, vied with one another 
in entertaining Him. But the excitement died 
down suddenly and soon. 

The next year is called The year of opposition. 
The applause was over. The crowds thinned. 
On every hand He was obstructed. The Sad- 
ducees left Him. The Pharisees left Him. The 
political party were roused into opposition. The 
Jews, the great mass of the people, gave Him up. 
His path was narrowing. 

With the third period came the end. The path 
was very narrow now. There were but twelve left 
to Him when the last act of the drama opens. 
They are gathered on the stage together for the 
last time. But it must narrow still. One of the 
disciples, after receiving the sop, goes out. Eleven 
are left Him. Peter soon follows. There are but 
ten. One by one they leave the stage, till all for- 
sook Him and fled, and He is left to die alone. 
Well might He cry, as He hung there in this awful 
solitude — as if even God had forgotten Him, " My 
God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" 

But this is not peculiar to Jesus. It is typical 
of the life of every Christian. His path, too, must 
narrow. As he grows in grace, he grows in isola- 
tion. He feels that God is detaching his life from 
all around it and drawing him to Himself for a 
more intimate fellowship. But as the communion 
is nearer, the chasm which separates him from his 



108 THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 

fellow-man must widen. The degree of a man's 
religion, indeed, is to be gauged by the degree of 
his rejection by the world. With the early Chris- 
tians was not this the commonest axiom, " We 
told you before," did not Paul warn them, " that 
we should suffer "? " Unto some it was given in 
the behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, 
but also to suffer for His sake." It was the posi- 
tion of honour, as it were, in the family of God 
to be counted worthy of being persecuted for the 
sake of Christ. 

It is a sad reflection that, as in the case of 
Christ, the keenest suffering may come sometimes 
still from one's own family circle. Among our 
friends there may be one on whom we all look 
askance — one who is growing up in the beauty 
of holiness, and we not knowing what it is that 
makes him strange. It often needs Death to 
teach us the beauty of a life which has been lived 
beside our own ; and we only know the worth of 
it when God proves it by taking it to Himself. 

Finally, it may be objected to all this that if 
eccentricity is a virtue, it is easily purchased. 
Any one can set up for an eccentric character. 
And if that is the desideratum of religion we 
shall have candidates enough for the office. But 
it remains to define the terms on which a Chris- 
tian shall be eccentric — Christ's own terms. And 
let them be guides to us in our eccentricity, for 
without them we shall be not Christians, but 
fanatics. 



THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 109 

The qualities which distinguish the eccentricity 
of godliness from all other eccentricities are three ; 
and we gather them all from the Life of Christ. 

1. Notice, His eccentricity was not destructive. 
Christ took the world as He found it, He left it 
as it was. He had no quarrel with existing insti- 
tutions. He did not overthrow the church — He 
went to church. He said nothing against politics 
— He supported the government of the country. 
He did not denounce Society — His first public 
action was to go to a marriage. His great aim, in 
fact, outwardly, and all along, was to be as nor- 
mal, as little eccentric as possible. The true 
fanatic always tries the opposite. The Spirit 
alone was singular in Jesus; a fanatic always 
spoils his cause by extending it to the letter. 
Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil. A 
fanatic comes not to fulfil, but to destroy. If we 
would follow the eccentricity of our Master, let 
it not be in asceticism, in denunciation, in punc- 
tiliousness, and scruples about trifles, but in large- 
ness of heart, singleness of eye, true breadth of 
character, true love to men, and heroism for 
Christ. 

2. It was perfectly composed. We think of ec- 
centricity as associated with frenzy, nervousness, 
excitableness, ungovernable enthusiasm. But the 
life of Jesus was a calm. It was a life of marvel- 
lous composure. The storms were all about it, 
tumult and tempest, tempest and tumult, waves 
breaking over Him all the time till the worn body 



no THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION 

was laid in the grave. But the inner life was as 
a sea of glass. It was a life of perfect compos- 
ure. To come near it even now is to be calmed 
and soothed. Go to it at any moment, the great 
calm is there. The request to " come " at any 
moment was a standing invitation all through His 
life. Come unto Me at My darkest hour, in My 
heaviest trial, on My busiest day, and I will give 
you Rest. And when the very bloodhounds were 
gathering in the streets of Jerusalem to hunt Him 
down, did He not turn to the quaking group 
around Him and bequeath to them — a last legacy 
— "My Peace"? 

There was no frenzy about His life, no excite- 
ment. In quietness and confidence the most ter- 
rible days sped past. In patience and composure 
the most thrilling miracles were wrought. Men 
came unto Him, and they found not restlessness, 
but Rest. Composure is to be had for faith. We 
shall be worse than fanatics if we attempt to go 
along the lonely path with Christ without this 
spirit. We shall do harm, not good. We shall 
leave half-done work. We shall wear out before 
our time. Do not say, " Life is short." Christ's 
life was short ; yet He finished the work that was 
given Him to do. He was never in a hurry. 
And if God has given us anything to do for 
Him, He will give time enough to finish it with 
a repose like Christ's. 

3. This life was consistent. 

From the Christian standpoint a consistent life 



THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION in 

is the only sane life. It is not worth while being 
religious without being thorough. An inconsist- 
ent Christian is the true eccentric. He is the 
true phenomenon in the religious world ; to his 
brother Christian the only madman. For mad- 
ness, in a sense, is inconsistency; madness is 
incoherency, irrelevancy, disconnectedness; and 
surely there is nothing more disconnected than a 
belief in God and Eternity and no corresponding 
life. And that man is surely beside himself who 
assumes the name of Christ, pledges perhaps in 
sacramental wine, to be faithful to His name and 
cause, and who from one year to another never 
lifts a finger to help it. The man who is really 
under a delusion, is he who bears Christ's name, 
who has no uneasiness about the quality of his 
life, nor any fear for the future, and whose true 
creed is that 

He lives for himself, be thinks for himself, 

For himself, and none beside ; 
Just as if Jesus had never lived, 

As if He had never died. 

Yes, a consistent eccentricity is the only sane life. 
" An enthusiastic religion is the perfection of 
common sense. ,, And to be beside oneself for 
Christ's sake is to be beside Christ, which is 
man's chief end for time and eternity. 



NUMBER V 

"To Me to Live 
is Christ" 

(In connection with Acts ix. 1-18) 
Philippians i. 21 

THERE is no more significant sign of the 
days in which we live than the interest 
society seems to be taking in the biographies 
of great men. Almost all the more popular 
recent books, for instance — the books which 
every one is reading and has to read — come 
under the catalogue of biography; and, to meet 
the demand, two or three times in each season 
the market has to be supplied with the lives, in 
minute detail, of men who but for this would per- 
haps have lain in unnoticed graves. 

This thirst for memoirs and lives and letters is 
not at all to be put down in every case to the 
hero worship which is natural to every heart. It 
means, perhaps, a higher thing than this. It 
means, in the first place, that great living is being 
appreciated for its own sake ; and, in the second, 
that great living is being imitated. If it is true 
that any of us are beginning to appreciate great- 
ness for its own sake — greatness, that is to say, 



"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 113 

in the sense of great and true living — it is one 
of the most hopeful symptoms of our history. 
And if we are, further, going on from the mere 
admiration of great men to try and live like 
them, we are obeying one of the happiest im- 
pulses of our being. There is indeed no finer 
influence abroad than the influence of great men 
in great books, and all that literature can do in 
supplying the deformed world with worthy and 
shapely models is entitled to gratitude and 
respect. 

But a shadow sometimes comes over this 
thought of the magnetic attraction which great- 
ness is having upon our age — the thought how 
hard it is to get our greatness pure. The well is 
deep, it may be, and the fountain sparkles to 
the eye ; but we ask perhaps for a guarantee of 
quality in vain. Each new ideal we adjust our 
life to copy turns out to have its adulteration of 
selfishness or pride, like the one we studied last, 
till the pattern we sought to follow surprises us 
by becoming a beacon for us to shun. 

There are a few biographies, however, where 
men may find their greatness pure ; and amongst 
them is one familiar writing which, though seldom 
looked at as biographical in this sense, really 
contains the life and letters of the greatest man 
probably of human history. That man was Paul. 
The life of Paul the man, apart from the theology 
of Paul the Apostle, is a legitimate and fruitful 
study from the mere standpoint of the biography 

8 



114 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST " 

of a great and successful life. Judged by his in- 
fluence on human history, no single life is entitled 
to more admiration for what it has done, or in- 
deed more worthy of imitation for what it was. 
And in our quest after a true life, a worthy and 
satisfying life, there may be some light for us in 
this old biography which we have missed per- 
haps in the lives of later men. 

If we were to begin by seeking an appropriate 
motto for Paul's life, we should not need to go 
further than the quotation which forms our text. 
This fragment from one of his own letters lets us 
in at once to the whole secret of his life. The 
true discovery of a character is the discovery of 
its ideals. Paul spares us any speculation in his 
case. "To me to live," he says, "is Christ." 
This is the motto of his life, the ruling passion of 
it, which at once explains the nature of his suc- 
cess and accounts for it. He lives for Christ. 
" To me to live is Christ." 

Now here at the outset is a valuable practical 
point settled in this biography. When we turn 
to the biographies of most great men, we find 
either no key or a very complex one; and we 
rise from the perusal with nothing more than a 
vague desire to do better, but with no discovery 
how. We gain stimulus, indeed, but no knowl- 
edge, which is simply injurious. We are braced 
up enthusiastically for a little, and then do noth- 
ing. At the end of it all we are not better, we 
are only exhausted. This is the reason why 



"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST " 115 

biography-hunters often, after long dogging the 
footsteps of greatness, find that they are perhaps 
no further on the road to it themselves, but 
rather more inclined than before to lie down 
where they were. 

But Paul explicitly announces to us the work- 
ing principle of his life. If the lines are great 
lines, there is nothing mysterious about them. 
If we want to live like Paul, we have simply to 
live for Christ ; Christ our life on one side, our 
life for Christ on the other, and both summed up 
together in Paul's epitome : " To me to live is 
Christ." 

This being the clue to Paul's life, the instructive 
question next arises, What exactly did Paul mean 
by this principle, and how did he come to find it 
out? But the question, " What is this object of 
life?" is so closely bound up with how Paul came 
to have this object of life, that the answer to the 
last question will form at once an explanation 
and an illustration of the first. 

Therefore let us go at once for the answer to 
the life itself. Great principles are always best 
and freshest when studied from the life, and it so 
happens that a circumstance in Paul's life makes 
it peculiarly easy to act on this rule here. 

That circumstance was that Paul had two lives. 
Many men besides Paul have had two lives, but 
the line is cleaner cut in Paul's case than in al- 
most any biography we have. 

Both lives were somewhere about the same 



u6 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 

length, so far as we know, but so distinct in their 
general features and details that Paul had not 
only two lives, but, as if to mark the distinction 
more strikingly, two names. Let us look for a 
moment at the first of these lives — the reason 
will appear presently. 

Paul's first life, as we all know, was spent under 
the most auspicious circumstances, and for cer- 
tain reasons it will be worth while running over 
it. Born of a family which belonged to the most 
select theological school of that day, the son was 
early looked upon as at once the promise of his 
parents and the hope of their religion. They 
sent him when a mere lad to Jerusalem, and en- 
rolled him as a student in the most distinguished 
college of the time. After running a brilliant 
college career, and sitting for many years at the 
feet of the greatest learning the Jewish capital 
could boast, we find him bursting upon the world 
with his splendid talents, and taking a place at 
once in the troubled political movements of the 
day. It was impossible for such a character with 
his youth's enthusiasm and a Pharisee's pride to 
submit to the tame life of a temple Rabbi, and he 
sees his opportunity in the rise of the Christian 
sect Here, at last, he would match his abilities 
in a contest which would gain him at once a field 
of exercise and a name. So far, doubtless, he 
thought his first life great. 

Into his work of persecution he seems to have 
next entered with all an inquisitor's zest. His 



"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST " 117 

conspicuous place among the murderers of the 
first martyr stamped him at once as a leader, 
and gave him the first taste of a popularity 
which, but for the interruption of the hand of God, 
had ended perhaps disastrously to the struggling 
Christian Church. His success as an inquisitor 
is recognised in the highest quarters of the land ; 
and the young man's fortune is made. No young 
man of that time perhaps had such prospects now 
as Saul. " He was a man raised up for the emer- 
gency," said all Jerusalem, and henceforth the 
Jewish world was at his feet. Courted as the 
rising man of his day and flushed with success, 
he leaves no stone unturned to find fresh oppor- 
tunities of adding to his influence and power. 
And as he climbed each rung of the ladder of 
fame, we can imagine, as a great student of Paul 
has said, how his heart swelled within him as he 
read these words at night from the Book of Wis- 
dom : " I shall have estimation among the multi- 
tude, and honour with the elders, though I be 
young. I shall be found of a quick conceit in 
judgment, and shall be admired in the sight of 
great men. When I hold my tongue they shall 
abide my leisure, and when I speak they shall 
give good ear unto me." Such was the man who 
said, " To me to live is Christ." 

Upon the little Church at Jerusalem he has 
already wreaked his vengeance to the full. The 
town and neighbourhood at last are well nigh 
ridded of the pest, and, an unlooked-for calam- 



u8 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST " 

ity, in the height of his triumph Saul finds his 
occupation gone. Dispersed in all directions, 
members of the little band have found their way 
in secret through Judaea and Samaria, through 
Syria and Phoenicia, even into strange cities. 
And Paul finds round about Jerusalem no fuel to 
feed the martyrs' fire or add more lustre to his 
name. 

But there is no pause in the pursuit of human 
fame. The young lawyer's reputation can never 
end in an anti-climax like this. And with the am- 
bition which knows not how to rest, and in the 
pride of his Pharisee's heart, he strikes out the 
idea to reverse the maxim of the crucified Leader 
of the hated sect, and go into all the world and 
suppress the gospel in every creature. He 
applies to the high-priest for commission and 
authority, and, breathing out threatenings and 
slaughter, the man who is going to live for Christ 
starts out on his Christless mission to make 
havoc of the Church. 

This is the last act of Paul's first life. Let us 
note it carefully. We are on the bridge which 
separates Paul's two lives. What marks the tran- 
sition is this : up to this time his life has been 
spent in public. It has been one prolonged whirl 
of excitement and applause. But no sooner have 
the gates of Jerusalem closed upon him than Paul 
begins to think. The echoes of the people's 
praises have died away one by one. He has 
gone out into the great desert. It is strangely 



"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 119 

silent and soothing, and the lull has come at last 
upon his soul. It is a long time, perhaps, since 
he has had time to think ; but Saul was far too 
great a man to live long an unthinking life. His 
time for reflection has come. And as he wanders 
with his small escort along the banks of the Jor- 
dan or through the solitary hills of Samaria, his 
thoughts are busy with the past. And if Saul 
was far too great a man to live an unthinking 
life, he was also too great a man to think well of 
his life when he did think. Each new day as he 
journeyed away from the scene of his triumph, 
and looked back upon it all from that distance — 
which always gives the true perspective to man's 
life — his mind must have filled with many a sad 
reproach. And as he lay down at night in the 
quiet wilderness his thoughts must often have 
turned on the true quality of the life to which he 
was sacrificing his talents and his youth. With 
his quick perception, with his keen trained intel- 
lect, with his penetration, he must have seen that 
after all this life was a mistake. Minds of lesser 
calibre in the applauding world which he had left 
had told him he was great. Now, in his calmer 
moments, he knew he was not great. The eter- 
nal heavens stretching above him pointed to an 
infinity which lay behind it all ; and the stars and 
the silence spoke to him of God. And he felt that 
his life was miserably small. Saul's thoughts 
were greater than Saul's life. How he had been 
living beneath himself — how he had wasted the 



120 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 

precious years of his youth — how he had sold 
his life for honour and reputation, and bartered 
the talents God had given him for a name, he 
must have seen. He had been dazzled, and that 
was all. He had nothing really to show for his 
life, nothing that would stand the test of solid 
thought. It was all done for himself. He, Saul 
of Tarsus, the rising man of his time, was the 
centre of it all. " After all," perhaps he cried in 
agony, " To me to live is Saul," " To me to live 
is Saul." 

Paul's first great discovery, as we have seen — 
and it is the discovery which precedes every true 
reformation of life — was the discovery of him- 
self. When Paul said, "To me to live is my- 
self/' his conversion was begun. There was no 
retreat then for a man like him. He was too 
great to have such a little centre to his life; or, 
rather, he felt life too great to be absorbed with 
even such a personality as his. 

But the next element in the case was not so 
easily discovered, and it is of much more impor- 
tance than the first. His first achievement was 
only to discover himself. His second was to 
discover some one better than himself. He 
wanted a new centre to his life — where was he 
to find it? The unseen hand which painted his 
own portrait in its true colours on the dark back- 
ground of his mind had painted every other life 
the same. The high priests at Jerusalem, the 
members of the Sanhedrim, his own father at 



"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 121 

Tarsus — all the men he knew were living lives 
like himself. They were no better — most of 
them worse. Must the old centre of Paul's life 
remain there still ? Is there nothing better in 
all the world than himself? 

It may be conjecture, or it may be nearer 
truth, that while such questionings passed 
through the mind of Paul, there came into his 
thoughts as he journeyed some influences from 
a life — a life like that for which his thoughts 
had longed. Paul's best known journeys are his 
missionary tours, and we generally associate him 
in our thoughts with the countries of Asia and 
Italy and Greece. But this time his way leads 
through the holy land. He has entered the land 
of Christ. He is crossing the very footsteps of 
Jesus. The villages along his route are fragrant 
still with what Jesus said and did. They are 
not the bitter things that Saul had heard before. 
Kind words are repeated to him, and tender acts 
which Jesus did are told. The peasants by the 
wayside and the shepherds on the hills are full 
of stories of a self-denying life which used to 
pass that way a year or two ago, but now will 
come no more. And the mothers at the cottage 
doors remember the stranger who suffered their 
little children to come unto Him, and got them 
to repeat to Saul, perhaps, the children's bless- 
ing which He left behind. Perhaps, in passing 
through Samaria, the traveller met a woman at 
a well, who tells her strange tale for the thou- 



122 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST " 

sandth time, of a weary man who had sat there 
once and said He was the Christ. And Galilee 
and Capernaum, and Bethsaida, and the lake 
shore at Gennesaret, are full of memories of the 
one true life which surely even then had begun 
to cast a sacred influence over Paul. At all 
events, there seemed a strange preparedness in 
his mind for the meeting on the Damascus road, 
as if the interview with Jesus then was not so 
much the first of his friendship as the natural 
outcome of something that had gone before. 
And no doubt the Spirit's silent working had 
been telling on his mind during all these quiet 
days, leading up his thoughts to the revelation 
that was to come, and preparing a pathos for the 
memorable question, with its otherwise unac- 
countable emphasis, "Why persecutest thou 
Met 91 

What went on between Paul's heart and God 
we do not know. We do not know how deep 
repentance ran, nor where, nor how, the justify- 
ing grace came down from heaven to his soul. 
Whether just then he went through our formula 
of conversion — the process which we like to 
watch and describe in technical words — we do 
not know. But we know this — there came a 
difference into his life. His life was changed. 
It was changed at its most radical part. He had 
changed centres. During the process, whatever 
it was, this great transfer was effected. Paul 
deliberately removed the old centre from his 



"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 123 

life, and put a new one in its place. Instead of 
"to me to live is Paul," it was now, "to me to 
live is Christ." 

Of course, when the centre of Paul's life was 
changed, he had to take his whole life to pieces 
and build it up again on a totally different plan. 
This change, therefore, is not a mere incident 
in a man's life. It is a revolution, a revolution 
of the most sweeping sort. There never was a 
life so filled up with anti-Christian thoughts and 
impulses brought so completely to a halt. There 
never was such a total eclipse of the most bril- 
liant worldly prospects, nor such an abrupt tran- 
sition from a career of dazzling greatness to 
humble and obscure ignominy. 

Let those who define conversion as a certain 
colourless experience supposed to go on in the 
feelings, blind themselves to the real transition 
in this life if they will. Let them ask them- 
selves if there ever was a more sweeping revolu- 
tion in any life, for any cause, than in Paul's, 
when he abandoned himself, literally abandoned 
himself, and subordinated everything, and ever- 
more, to this one supreme passion — " to live for 
Christ." 

The stages by which this transcendent stand- 
point is to be reached are plainly now before us. 
They are, the discovery of self and the discovery 
of Christ. These two discoveries between them 
exhaust the whole of life. Till these discov- 
eries are made, no man truly lives till both are 



124 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 

made — for many discover themselves who have 
not yet discovered Christ. But he that hath 
not the Son hath not life. Whatever he has, 
existence, continuity, he has not life. The condi- 
tion of living at all is to live for Christ. " He 
that hath the Son," and he alone, and no one 
else, "hath life." 

Paul takes special care indeed that we should 
fully understand the altogether different quality 
of the two lives which a man may live. In his 
view, the first life, the ordinary life of men, was 
altogether a mistake. "What things were gain 
to me," then, he tells us, "I count loss for 
Christ." That brilliant career of his was loss; 
that mission, noble and absorbing once, was 
mere waste energy and misspent time. And 
he goes further still. His life was death. It 
was selfishness pure and simple; it was the car- 
nal mind pure and simple; and to be carnally 
minded is death. We shall understand the the- 
ology of these letters better if we think of the 
writer as a man escaping death. And with this 
horrible background to his life we can see the 
fuller significance of his words, that for him to 
live was Christ. 

Another thing is also made plain to us. 

The ceaseless demand of the New Testament 
for regeneration is also plain to us when we study 
the doctrine in such a life as this. It was not 
Saul who wrote the letters; it was a different 
man altogether — Paul. It was one who was in 



"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 125 

a totally different world from the other. If it 
was Saul, he must have been born again before 
he could have done it. Nothing less could ac- 
count for it. His interests were new, his stand- 
point, his resources, his friendships. All old 
things, in fact, had passed away. All things 
had become new. In a word, he was a new 
creature. The pool, polluted and stagnant, had 
found its way at last into the wide, pure sea ; the 
spirit, tired of its narrow prison, disgusted with 
ambition which ended with itself, reaches out to 
the eternal freedom, and finds a worthy field of 
exercise in the great enterprise of Christ. 

There is one class, finally, to whom this biog- 
raphy of Paul has a special message. The people 
who need Paul's change most are not those, 
always, who are most thought to need it. The 
really difficult cases — to others, but especially 
to themselves — are the people who cannot see 
really that their life could be much better. 
There are thousands who do not see exactly 
what conversion could do to them. And their 
great difficulty in changing their life has just 
been this: "What, after all, should we really 
have to change? Our lives at present can 
scarcely be distinguished from the real Chris- 
tians around us. Had we been irreligious, or 
profane, or undutiful, or immoral, conversion 
might do something for us; but we belong to 
the class who feel how well we have been brought 



126 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 

up, how much our interests are gathered round 
religion, and, generally, how circumspect and 
proper our entire outward life has been. We 
do not really see, indeed, what change conver- 
sion could make." Now this is a class who 
seldom get any sympathy, and none deserve it 
more. Religious people and religious books are 
always saying hard things of the " religiously 
brought up " — bitterly hard and undeserved 
things — until they almost come to feel as if 
their goodness were a crime. But there are 
secret rendings of the heart within these ranks 
— longings after God perhaps purer than any- 
where else outside God's true family. And 
there are those who feel the difficulty of chang- 
ing in surroundings so Christian-like as theirs; 
who feel it so keenly that their despair some- 
times leads them to the dark thought of almost 
envying the prodigal and the open sinner, who 
seem to have more chance of finding the king- 
dom than they. 

Now the change in Paul's life is exactly the 
case in point for them. Paul himself was one of 
these characters who wonder what use conversion 
could ever be to them. He was one of the " re- 
ligiously brought up." Touching the law he was 
blameless. There was no stricter man with his 
religion in all Jerusalem than Saul; no man took 
his place more regularly in the temple, or kept 
the Sabbath with more scrupulous care. Touch- 
ing the law he was blameless — just the man you 



"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 127 

would have said who never would be changed, 
who was far too good to be susceptible of a change. 
But this is the man — not far from the kingdom 
of God, as every one thought him to be — who 
found room in his most religious heart for the 
most sweeping reform that ever occurred in a 
life. 

Let those who really do not know very well 
what religion could do for them take a little quiet 
thought like Paul. Let them look once more, 
not at the circumference, but at the centre of 
their life. Let them ask one question about it : 
"Is it Christ?" There is no middle way in 
religion — self or Christ. The quality of the 
selfishness — intellectual, literary, artistic — the 
fact that our self's centre may be of a superior 
order of self, does nothing to destroy this grave 
distinction. It is between all self and Christ. 
For the matter of that no centre could have been 
more disciplined or cultured than Paul's. In its 
place it was truly great and worthy, but its place 
was anywhere else than where Paul had it for 
the full half of his life. This question, then, 
of centres is the vital question. "To me to 
live is" — what? " To me to live is myself!" 
Suppose that it is so. What kind of an end 
to a life is this ? How much nobler a centre 
our life is worthy of — our one life — which is 
to live for evermore; which is to live with a 
great centre or a mean one — meanly or greatly 
for evermore ! Think of living with oneself for 



128 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 

ever and for ever. Think of having lived, living 
now, and evermore, living only for this. Con- 
sider Him who endured such contradiction of 
sinners for our sake, who made Himself of no 
reputation, who gave up form and comeliness; 
who humbled Himself and emptied Himself for 
us. Then look with complacency on such a life 
if we can — 

" I lived for myself, I thought for myself, 

For myself, and none beside, 
Just as if Jesus had never lived, 
As if he had never died." 

2. This leads naturally to the other point — 
the discovery of Christ. And here once more 
we draw abundant encouragement from our 
biography of Paul. And it brings us not only to 
a hopeful thought, but to a very solemn thought. 
We have all in some way made the discovery of 
Christ — we know more about Christ than Paul 
did when he became a Christian. When he made 
Him the centre of his life, he knew less of Him 
perhaps than most of us. It is a startling truth, 
at all events, that we are as near the centre of life 
— the centre of the universe — as Paul. We 
have heard of Him from our infancy ; the features 
of His life are as familiar as our own; we have 
no hatred to Him as Paul had once. And if the 
few days' quietness in the Holy Land, which 
Paul had on the threshold of his change, were in 
any way a preparation for the crisis of his life, 
how much more has our past life been a prepara- 



"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 129 

tion for a change in ours ! We call Paul's change 
a sudden conversion — we do not know how sud- 
den it was. But if our life was changed to-day, it 
would be no sudden conversion. Our whole past 
has been leading up to these two discoveries of life. 
Our preparation, so far as knowledge of the new 
centre goes, is complete. The change, so far as 
that is concerned, might happen now. We have 
the responsibility of being so near eternal life as 
that. 

The question comes to be then, finally, simply 
a question of transfer. To me to live is myself, 
or to me to live is Christ. To live for Christ is 
not simply the sublime doctrine which it includes 
of Christ our life. It is not so much Christ our 
life, but rather our life for Christ. 

Shall it be, then, our life for Christ? " To me 
to live is Christ." Contrast it with all the other 
objects of life ; take all the centres out of all the 
great lives, and compare them one by one. Can 
you match the life-creed of Paul — " to me to live 
is Christ"? 

" To me to live is — business" " to me to live 
is — pleasure," " to me to live is — myself." We 
can all tell in a moment what our religion is really 
worth. " To me to live is " — what ? What are 
we living for? What rises naturally to our heart 
when we press it with a test like this : " To me to 
live is" — what? First thoughts, it is said, are 
best in matters of conscience. What was the 
first thought that came into our hearts just then? 
9 



I30 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 

What word trembled first on our lip just now — 
" to me to live is " — was it business, was it 
money, was it ourself, was it Christ? 

" To me to live is — business," " to me to live 
is pleasure," " to me to live is myself." What 
kind of an end to an immortal life is this? How 
much nobler a centre our life is worthy of — our 
life, our one precious life, which is to live for 
evermore ; which is to live with a great centre or 
a mean one — meanly or greatly for evermore. 

The time will come when we shall ask ourselves 
why we ever crushed this infinite substance of our 
life within these narrow bounds, and centred that 
which lasts for ever on what must pass away. In 
the perspective of eternity all lives will seem poor, 
and small, and lost, and self-condemned beside a 
life for Christ. There will be plenty then to 
gather round the Cross. But who will do it now? 
Who will do it now? There are plenty men to 
die for Him, there are plenty to spend eternity 
with Christ ; but where is the man who will live for 
Christ ? Death and Eternity in their place. Christ 
wants lives. No fear about death being gain if 
we have lived for Christ. So let it be. " To me 
to live is Christ." There is but one alternative — 
the putting on of Christ; Paul's alternative, the 
discovery of Christ. We have all in some sense, 
indeed, already made the discovery of Christ. We 
may be as near it now as Paul when he left Jeru- 
salem. There was no notice given that he was to 
change masters. The new Master simply crossed 



"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" 131 

his path one day, and the great change was come. 
How often has He crossed our path? We know 
what to do the next time : we know how our life 
can be made worthy and great — how only ; we 
know how death can become gain — how only. 
Many, indeed, tell us death will be gain. Many 
long for life to be done that they may rest, as they 
say, in the quiet grave. Let no cheap senti- 
mentalism deceive us. Death can only be gain 
when to have lived was Christ. 



NUMBER VI 

Clairvoyance 

" We look not at the things which are seen, but at the 
things which are not seen : for the things which are 
seen are temporal j but the things which are not 
seen are eternal P — 2 Cor. iv. 1 8. 

"Everything that is is double" 

Hermes Trismegistus. 

OOK not at the things which are seen." 
JL^ How can we look not at the things which 
are seen? If they are seen, how can we help 
looking at them? "Look at the things which 
are not seen." How can we look at things which 
are not seen? Has religion some magic wishing- 
cap, making the solid world invisible, or does it 
supply some strange clairvoyance power, seeing 
that which is unseen? 

This is one of these alluring paradoxes which 
all great books delight in, which baffle thought 
while courting it, but which disclose to whomever 
picks the lock the rarest and profoundest truth. 
The surface meaning of a paradox is either 
nonsense, or it is false. In this case it is false. 
One would gather, at first sight, that we had here 
another of these attacks upon the world, of 
which the Bible is supposed to be so fond. It 



CLAIRVOYANCE 133 

reads as a withering contrast between the things 
of time and the things of eternity — as an un- 
qualified disparagement of this present world. 
The things which are seen are temporal — no- 
where, not worth a moment's thought, not even 
to be looked at. 

In reality this is neither the judgment of the 
Bible nor of reason. 

There are four reasons why we should look at 
the things which are seen : — 

1. First, because God made them. Anything 
that God makes is worth looking at. We live in 
no chance world. It has been all thought out. 
Everywhere work has been spent on it lavishly — 
thought and work — loving thought and exquisite 
work. All its parts together, and every part 
separately, are stamped with skill, beauty, and 
purpose. As the mere work of a Great Master 
we are driven to look — deliberately and long — 
at the things which are seen. 

2. But, second, God made me to look at them. 
He who made light made the eye. It is a gift of 
the Creator on purpose that we may look at the 
things which are seen. The whole mechanism 
of man is made with reference to the temporal 
world — the eye for seeing it, the ear for hearing 
it, the nerve for feeling it, the muscle for moving 
about on it and getting more of it. He acts con- 
trary to his own nature who harbours even a sus- 
picion of the things that are seen. 

3. But again, thirdly, God has not merely made 



134 CLAIRVOYANCE 

the world, but He has made it conspicuous. So 
far from lying in the shade, so far from being 
constituted to escape observation, the whole tem- 
poral world clamours for it. Nature is never and 
nowhere silent. If you are apathetic, if you will 
not look at the things which are seen, they will 
summon you. The bird will call to you from the 
tree-top, the sea will change her mood for you, 
the flower looks up appealingly from the way- 
side, and the sun, before he sets with irresistible 
colouring, will startle you into attention. The 
Creator has determined that, whether He be 
seen or no, no living soul shall tread His earth 
without being spoken to by these works of His 
hands. God has secured that. And even those 
things which have no speech nor language, whose 
voice is not heard, have their appeal going out 
to all the world, and their word to the end of the 
earth. Had God feared that the visible world 
had been a mere temptation to us, He would 
have made it less conspicuous. Certainly He 
has warned us not to love it, but nowhere not to 
look at it. 

4. The last reason, fourthly, is the greatest of 
all. Hitherto we have been simply dealing with 
facts. Now we come to a principle. Look at 
the things that are seen, because it is only by 
looking at the things that are seen that we can 
have any idea of the things that are unseen. Our 
whole conception of the eternal is derived from 
the temporal. 



CLAIRVOYANCE 135 

Take any unseen truth, or fact, or law. The 
proposition is that it can only be apprehended 
by us by means of the seen and temporal. Take 
the word eternal itself. What do we know of 
eternity? Nothing that we have not learned from 
the temporal. When we try to realise that word 
there rises up before us the spaceless sea. We 
glide swiftly over it day after day, but the illim- 
itable waste recedes before us, knowing no end. 
On and on, week and month, and there stretches 
the same horizon vague and infinite, the far-off 
circle we can never reach. We stop. We are 
far enough. This is eternity! 

In reality this is not eternity ; it is mere water, 
the temporal, liquid and tangible. But by look- 
ing at this thing which is seen we have beheld 
the unseen. Here is a river. It is also water. 
But its different shape mirrors a different truth. 
As we look, the opposite of eternity rises up 
before us. There is Time, swift and silent; or 
Life, fleeting and irrevocable. So one might run 
over all the material of his thoughts, all the 
groundwork of his ideas, and trace them back to 
things that are temporal. They are really mate- 
rial, made up of matter, and in order to think at 
all, one must first of all see. 

Nothing could illustrate this better, perhaps, 
than the literary form of our English Bible. 
Leaving out for the present the language of 
symbol and illustration which Christ spoke, there 
is no great eternal truth that is not borne to us 



136 CLAIRVOYANCE 

upon some material image. Look, for instance, 
at its teaching about human life. To describe 
that it does not even use the words derived from 
the temporal world. It brings us face to face 
with the temporal world, and lets us abstract them 
for ourselves. It never uses the word "fleeting" 
or " transitory '." It says life is a vapour that 
appeareth for a little and vanisheth away. It 
likens it to a swift post, a swift ship, a tale that is 
told. 

It never uses the word " irrevocable" It 
speaks of water spilt on the ground that cannot 
be gathered up again — a thread cut by the 
weaver. Nor does it tell us that life is " evanes- 
cent" It suggests evanescent things — a dream, 
a sleep, a shadow, a shepherd's tent removed. 
And even to convey the simpler truth that life is 
short, we find only references to short things that 
are seen — a handbreadth, a pilgrimage, a flower, 
a weaver's shuttle. The Bible in these instances 
is not trying to be poetical : it is simply trying to 
be true. And it distinctly, unconsciously recog- 
nises the fact that truth can only be borne into 
the soul through the medium of things. We 
must refuse to believe, therefore, that we are not 
to look at the things which are seen. It is a 
necessity; for the temporal is the husk and 
framework of the eternal. And the things which 
are not seen are made of the things which do 
appear. " All visible things," said Carlyle, " are 
emblems. What thou seest is not there on its 



CLAIRVOYANCE 137 

own account; strictly speaking, is not there at 
all. Matter exists only spiritually, and to repre- 
sent some idea and body it forth " {Sartor 
Resartus, p. 49). And so John Ruskin : — " The 
more I think of it I find this conclusion more 
impressed upon me — that the greatest thing a 
human soul ever does in this world is to see 
something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. 
Hundreds of people can talk for one who can 
think ; but thousands can think for one who can 
see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and 
religion — all in one." 

II. From this point we can now go on from 
the negative of the paradox to the second and 
positive term — " Look at the things which are 
not seen." We now understand how to do this. 
Where is the eternal? Where are the unseen 
things, that we may look at them? And the 
answer is — in the temporal. Look then at the 
temporal, but do not pause there. You must 
penetrate it. Go through it, and see its shadow, 
its spiritual shadow, on the further side. Look 
upon this shadow long and earnestly, till that 
which you look through becomes the shadow, 
and the shadow merges into the reality. Look 
through till the thing you look through becomes 
dim, then transparent, and then invisible, and 
the unseen beyond grows into form and strength. 
For, truly, the first thing seen is the shadow, 
the thing on the other side the reality. The 
thing you see is only a solid, and men mistake 



138 CLAIRVOYANCE 

solidity for reality. But that alone is the reality 
— the eternal which lies behind. Look, then, 
not at the things which are seen, but look through 
them to the things that are unseen. 

The great lesson w 7 hich emerges from all this is 
as to the religious use of the temporal w r orld. 
[Heaven lies behind earth. We see that this earth 
is not merely a place to live in, but to see in. 
We are to pass through it as clairvoyants, hold- 
ing the whole temporal world as a vast trans- 
parency, through which the eternal shines. 

Let us now apply this principle briefly to daily 
life. To most of us, the most practical division 
of life is threefold: the Working life, the Home 
life, and the Religious life. What do these 
yield us of the eternal, and how? 

I. The Working Life. To most men, work is 
just work — manual work, professional work, 
office work, household work, public work, intel- 
lectual work. A yellow primrose is just a 
yellow primrose; a ledger is a ledger; a lexicon 
is a lexicon. To a worker, Christian business 
man, with this mind, so far as spiritual uses are 
concerned, therefore, work is vanity — an un- 
accountable squandering of precious time. He 
must earn his success by the sweat of his brow ; 
that is all he knows about it. It is a curse, lying 
from the beginning upon man as man. So, six 
days of it each week, he bends his neck to it 
doggedly ; the seventh God allows him to think 
about the unseen and eternal. 



CLAIRVOYANCE 139 

Now God would never unspiritualise three- 
fourths of man's active life by work, if work were 
work, and nothing more. 

A second workman sees a little further. His 
work is not a curse exactly; it is his appointed 
life, his destiny. It is God's will for him, and he 
must go through w T ith it. No doubt its trials 
are good for him; at all events, God has ap- 
pointed him this sphere, and he must accept 
it with Christian resignation. 

It is a poor compliment to the Divine arrange- 
ments if they are simply to be acquiesced in. 
The all-wise God surely intends some higher 
outcome from three-fourths of life than ailment 
and resignation. 

To the spiritual man, next, there lies behind 
this temporal a something which explains all. 
He sees more to come out of it than the year's 
income, or the employment of his allotted time, 
or the benefiting of his species. If violins were 
to be the only product, there is no reason why 
Stradivarius should spend his life in making 
them. But work is an incarnation of the un- 
seen. In this loom man's soul is made. There 
is a subtle machinery behind it all, working 
while he is working, making or unmaking the 
unseen in him. Integrity, thoroughness, hon- 
esty, accuracy, conscientiousness, faithfulness, 
patience — these unseen things which complete 
a soul are woven into it in work. Apart from 
work, these things are not. As the conductor 



140 CLAIRVOYANCE 

leads into our nerves the invisible electric force, 
so work conducts into our spirit all high forces of 
character, all essential qualities of life, truth in 
the inward parts. Ledgers and lexicons, business 
letters, domestic duties, striking of bargains, 
writing of examinations, handling of tools — these 
are the conductors of the eternal. So much the 
conductors of the eternal, that without them there 
is no eternal. No man dreams integrity, accuracy, 
and so on. He cannot learn them by reading 
about them. These things require their wire as 
much as electricity. The spiritual fluids and 
the electric fluids are under the same law; and 
messages of grace come along the lines of honest 
work to the soul like the invisible message along 
the telegraph wires. Patience, spiritually, will 
travel along a wire as really as electricity. 

A workshop, therefore, or an office, or a school 
of learning, is a gigantic conductor. An office 
is not a place for making money — it is a place 
for making character. A workshop is not a 
place for making machinery — it is a place for 
making men : not for turning wood, for fitting 
engines, for founding cylinders. To God's eye, 
it is a place for founding character; it is a place 
for fitting in the virtues to one's life, for turn- 
ing out honest, modest-tempered God-fearing 
men. A school of learning is not so much a 
place for making scholars, as a place for making 
souls, and he who would ripen and perfect the 
eternal element in his being will do so by at- 



CLAIRVOYANCE 141 

tending to the religious uses of his daily task, 
recognising the unseen in its seen, so turning 
three-fourths of each day's life into an ever- 
acting means of grace. 

We say some kinds of work are immoral. A 
man who is turning out careless, imperfect work, 
is turning out a careless, imperfect character for 
himself. He is touching deceit every moment; 
and this unseen thing rises up from his work 
like a subtle essence, and enters and poisons his 
soul. We say piece-work is immoral — it makes 
a man only a piece of a man, shuts him out from 
variety, and originality, and adaptation, narrow- 
ing and belittling his soul. But we forget the 
counter-truth, that honest and good work make 
honesty and goodness, integrity and thorough- 
ness — nay, that these alone make them. And 
that he who would ripen and perfect his soul 
must attend to the religious uses of his daily 
work, — seeing the unseen in its seen, — heeding 
it, not with a dry punctiliousness, but lovingly, 
so turning the active life of each working day 
into means of grace, recognising its dignity, not 
as a mere making of money, but as an elaborate 
means of grace, occupying three-fourths of life. 

2. The Family Life. Next, life is so ordered 
that another large part of it is spent in the 
family. This also, therefore, has its part to 
play in the completing of the soul. The work- 
ing life could never teach a man all the lessons 
of the unseen. A whole set of additional mes- 



i 4 2 CLAIRVOYANCE 

sages from the eternal have to be conducted into 
his soul at home. This is why it is not good 
for a man to be alone. A lonely man is insu- 
lated from the eternal — inaccessible to the 
subtle currents which ought to be flowing hourly 
into his soul. 

This, too, is a higher source of spirituality 
than work. It is here that life dawns, and the 
first mould is given to the plastic substance — 
Home is the cradle of Eternity. 

It has been secured, therefore, that the first 
laws stamped there, the first lines laid down, the 
permanent way for the future soul, should be at 
once the lines of the eternal. Why do all men 
say that the family is a divine institution? Be- 
cause God instituted it? But what guided Him 
in constituting it as it is? Eternity. Home 
is a preliminary heaven. Its arrangements are 
purely the arrangements of Heaven. Heaven 
is a father with his children. The parts we 
shall play in that great home are just the parts 
we have learned in the family here. We shall 
go through the same life there — only without the 
matter. This matter is a mere temporary quality 
to practise the eternal on — as wooden balls are 
hung up in a schoolroom to teach the children 
numbers till they can think them for themselves. 

When a parent wishes to teach his child form 
and harmony, the properties of matter, beauty, 
and symmetry — all these unseen things — what 
does he do but give his child things that are 



CLAIRVOYANCE 143 

seen, through which he can see them ? He gives 
him a box of matter, bricks of wood, as play- 
things, and the child, in forming and transform- 
ing these, in building with them lines and 
squares, arches and pillars, has borne into his 
soul regularity and stability, form and symmetry. 
So God with us. The material universe is a 
mere box of bricks. We exercise our growing 
minds upon it for a space, till in the hereafter 
we become men, and childish things are put 
away. The temporal is but the scaffolding of 
the eternal ; and when the last immaterial souls 
have climbed through this material to God, the 
scaffolding shall be taken down, and the earth 
dissolved with fervent heat — not because it is 
wrong, but because its work is done. 

The mind of Christ is to be learned in the 
family. Strength of character may be acquired 
at work, but beauty of character is learned at 
home. There the affections are trained — that 
love especially which is to abide when tongues 
have ceased and knowledge fails. There the 
gentle life reaches us, the true heaven life. In one 
word, the family circle is the supreme conductor 
of Christianity. Tenderness, humbleness, cour- 
tesy; self-forgetfulness, faith, sympathy — these 
ornaments of a meek and quiet spirit are learned 
at the fireside, round the table, in commonplace 
houses, in city streets. We are each of us daily 
embodying these principles in our soul, or tram- 
pling them out of it, in the ordinary intercourse 



144 CLAIRVOYANCE 

of life. As actors in a charade, each member of 
the house each day, consciously or unconsciously, 
acts a word. The character is the seen, the word 
the unseen, and whether he thinks of the word at 
night or not, the souls of all around have guessed 
it silently ; and when the material mask and cos- 
tume is put away, and the circumstance of that 
day's life long years forgotten, that word of eter- 
nity lives on to make or mar the player, and all 
the players with him, in that day's game of life. 

To waken a man to all that is involved in each 
day's life, in even its insignificant circumstance 
and casual word and look, surely you have but 
to tell him all this — that in these temporals lie 
eternals; that in life, not in church, lies religion; 
that all that is done or undone, said or unsaid, 
of right or wrong, have their part, by an unalter- 
able law, in the eternal life of all. 

3. We now come to Religion. And we shall 
see further how God has put even that for us into 
the temporal. Reflect for a moment upon the 
teaching of Christ. All that He had to say of the 
eternal He put up in images of the temporal world. 
What are all His parables, His allusions to nature, 
His illustrations from real life, His metaphors and 
similes, but disclosures to our blind eyes of the 
unseen in the seen? In reality, the eternal is 
never nearer us than in a material image. Reason 
cannot bring religion near us, only things can. So 
Christ never demonstrated anything. He did not 
appeal to the reasoning power in man, but to the 



CLAIRVOYANCE 145 

seeing power — that power of imagination which 
deals with images of things. 

That is the key to all Christ's teaching — that 
He spoke not to the reason but to the imagina- 
tion. Incessantly He held up things before our 
eyes — things which in a few days or years would 
moulder into dust — and told us to look there at 
the eternal. He held up bread. " I am bread/' 
He said. And if you think over that for a lifetime, 
you will never get nearer to the truth than through 
that thing bread. That temporal is so perfect an 
image of the eternal, that no reading, or thinking, 
or sermonising, can get us closer to Christ. 

Hence the triumphant way in which He ran- 
sacked the temporal world, and marked off for us 
— what we, with our false views of spirituality, 
had never dared — marked off for us all its com- 
mon and familiar things as mirrors of the eternal. 
So light, life ; vine, wine ; bread, water, physi- 
cian, shepherd, and a hundred others, have all 
become transformed with a light from the other 
world. Observe, Christ does not say He is 
like these things, He is these things. Look 
through these things, right through, and you will 
see Him. We disappoint our souls continually 
in trying, by some other way than through these 
homely temporals, to learn the spiritual life. 

It is the danger of those who pursue the intel- 
lectual life as a specialty to miss this tender and 
gracious influence. The student of the family, 
by a generous though perilous homage paid to 
10 



146 CLAIRVOYANCE 

learning, is allowed to be an exception in the 
family life. He dwells apart, goes his own way, 
lives his own life ; and unconsciously, and to his 
pain, he finds himself, perhaps, gradually look- 
ing down on its homelier tasks and less transcen- 
dent interests. In society, it is for the scholar 
we make allowances; but the eccentricities we 
condone on account of their high compensations 
often mark an arrested development of what is 
really higher. And there is nothing so much to 
fear in oneself, and to check with more resolute 
will, than the unconscious tendency in all who 
pursue culture to get out of step with humanity, 
and be not at home at home. 

A very remarkable instance of Christ's use of 
this principle is the Sacraments. His design 
there was to perpetuate, in the most luminous 
and arresting way, the two grandest facts of the 
spiritual world. How did He proceed? He 
made them visible. He associated these facts 
with the two commonest things in the world — 
water and bread and wine — the every-day diet 
at every peasant's board. By these sacraments, 
the souls of men are tied down at the most sacred 
moments of life to the homeliest temporal things ; 
so that the highest spirituality, by Christ's own 
showing, comes to God's children through lowly 
forms of the material world. Transcendentalism 
in religion is a real mistake. True spirituality is 
to see the divinity in common things. 

But, yet again, there is a more wonderful ex- 



CLAIRVOYANCE 147 

hibition of this law than the Sacraments. God 
furnished the world with a temporal thing for 
every eternal thing save one. Every eternal 
truth had its material image in the world — every 
eternal law had its working-model among the 
laws of nature. But there was one thing want- 
ing. There was no temporal for the eternal God 
Himself. And man missed it. He wished to see 
even this unseen in something seen. In the sea, 
he saw eternity; in space, infinity; in the hills, 
sublimity; in the family, love; in the state, law. 
But there was no image of God. One speaks of 
what follows with bated breath. God gave it ! 
God actually gave it ! God made a seen image 
of Himself — not a vision, not a metaphor — an 
express image of His person. He laid aside His 
invisibility, He clothed Himself 'with the temporal, 
He took flesh and dwelt among us. The incarna- 
tion was the eternal become temporal for a little 
time, that we might look at it. 

It was our only way of beholding it, for we 
can only see the unseen in the seen. The word 
" God " conveyed no meaning ; there was no 
seen thing to correspond to that word, and no 
word is intelligible till there is an image for it. 
So God gave religion its new word in the intelli- 
gible form — a word in flesh — that, henceforth, 
all men might behold God's glory, not in itself, 
for that is impossible, but in the face of Jesus. 
This is the crowning proof of the religious use of 
the temporal world. 



148 CLAIRVOYANCE 

Such, then, are some of the eternal uses of the 
temporal world. 

Three classes of men, finally, have taken up 
their position with reference to this principle 
within recent years. 

One will not look at the unseen at all — the 
materialist. He is utterly blind to the eternal. 
The second is utterly blind to the temporal — 
the mystic. He does not look for the unseen in 
the seen, but apart from the seen. He works, 
or tries to work, by direct vision. The third is 
neither blind to the unseen or the seen, but short- 
sighted to both. The Ritualist selects some half- 
dozen things from the temporal world, and tries 
to see the unseen in them. As if there were only 
some half-dozen things — crosses and vestments, 
music and stained glass — through which the 
eternal shone ! The whole world is a ritual — 
that is the answer. If a man means to evade 
God, let him look for Him in some half-dozen 
forms; he will evade Him, he will not see Him 
anywhere else. But let him who wishes to get 
near God, and be with God always, move in a 
religious atmosphere always ; let him take up his 
position beside this truth. Worldliness has been 
defined as a looking at the things that are seen, 
but only closely enough to see their market value. 
Spirituality is that further look which sees their 
eternal value, which realises that 

" The earth is full of heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God." 



NUMBER VII 

The Three 
Facts of Sin 

" Who forgiveth all thine iniquities y 
Who healeth all thy diseases j 
Who 7'edeemeth thy life from destruction? 

Ps. ciii. 3, 4. 

THERE is one theological word which has 
found its way lately into nearly all the 
newer and finer literature of our country. It is 
not only one of the words of the literary world at 
present, it is perhaps the word. Its reality, its 
certain influence, its universality, have at last 
been recognised, and in spite of its theological 
name have forced it into a place which nothing 
but its felt relation to the wider theology of hu- 
man life could ever have earned for a religious 
word. That word, it need scarcely be said, is Sin. 
Even in the lighter literature of our country, 
and this is altogether remarkable, the ruling word 
just now is sin. Years ago it was the gay term 
Chivalry which held the foreground in poem and 
ballad and song. Later still, the word which held 
court, in novel and romance, was Love. But now 
a deeper word heads the chapters and begins the 
cantos. A more exciting thing than chivalry is 
descried in the arena, and love itself fades in 



ISO THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 

interest before this small word, which has wan- 
dered out of theology, and changed the face of 
literature, and made many a new book preach. 

It is not for religion to complain that her vocabu~ 
lary is being borrowed by the world. There may 
be pulpits where there are not churches; and it 
is a valuable discovery for religion that the world 
has not only a mind to be amused but a con- 
science to be satisfied. 

But religion has one duty in the matter — 
when her words are borrowed, to see that they 
are borrowed whole. Truth which is to pass into 
such common circulation must not be mutilated 
truth ; it must be strong, wringing, decided, 
whole; it must be standard truth; in a word, it 
must be Bible truth. 

Now the Bible truth about this word is in itself 
interesting and very striking. In David espe- 
cially, where the delineations are most perfect 
and masterful, the reiteration and classification 
of the great facts and varieties of sin form one of 
the most instructive and impressive features of 
the sacred writings. The Psalms will ever be the 
standard work on Sin — the most ample analysis 
of its nature, its effects, its shades of difference, 
and its cure. 

And yet, though it is such a common thing, I 
daresay many of us, perhaps, do not know any- 
thing about it. Somehow, it is just the common 
things we are apt not to think about. Take the 
commonest of all things — air. What do we 



THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 151 

know about it? What do we know about water? 
— that great mysterious sea, on which some of 
you spend your lives, which moans all the long 
winter at your very doors. Sin is a commoner 
thing than them all; deeper than the sea, more 
subtle than the air ; mysterious indeed, moaning 
in all our lives, through all the winter and sum- 
mer of our past; that shall last, in the undying 
soul of man, when there shall be no more sea. 
To say the least of it, it is most unreasonable 
that a man should live in sin all his life without 
knowing in some measure w T hat he is about. 

And as regards the higher bearings of the 
case, it is clear that without the fullest informa- 
tion about sin no man can ever have the fullest 
information about himself, which he ought to 
have ; and what is of more importance, without 
understanding sin no man can ever understand 
God. Even the Christian who has only the 
ordinary notions of sin in the general, can neither 
be making very much of himself or of his the- 
ology, for as a general rule, a man's experience 
of religion and of grace is in pretty exact pro- 
portion to his experience of sin. 

No doubt, the intimate knowledge of them- 
selves which the Old Testament writers had, had 
everything to do with their intimate knowledge 
of God. David, for instance, who had the deepest 
knowledge of God, had also the deepest knowl- 
edge of his own heart; and if there is one thing 
in the writings he has left us more conspicuous 



152 THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 

than another, it is the ceaseless reiteration of 
the outstanding facts of Sin — the cause, the 
effects, the shades of difference, and the cure of 
Sin. 

In the clause which forms our text to-day, 
David has given us in a nutshell the whole of 
the main facts of Sin. And for any one who 
wishes to become acquainted with the great 
pivots on which all human life turns, and on 
which his own life turns; for any one who 
wishes to understand the working of God's grace; 
for any one who wishes to examine himself on the 
other great fact of human sin ; there is no more 
admirable summary than these words : 

"Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who 
healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy 
life from destruction." 

These facts of sin, which it is necessary for us 
to know, may be said to be three in number : 
i. The Guilt of Sin. 

2. The Stain of Sin. 

3. The Power of Sin. 

And these three correspond roughly with the 
natural division of the text : 

1. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities = the 
Guilt of Sin. 

2. Who healeth all thy diseases = the Stain 
of Sin. 

3. Who redeemeth thy life from destruction = 
the Power of Sin. 

The best fact to start with will perhaps be 



THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 153 

the last of these; and for this reason the word 
Life is in it. " Who redeemeth thy Life from 
destruction." 

We have all a personal interest in anything 
that concerns life. We can understand things 
— even things in theology — if they will only 
bear upon our life. And to anything which in 
any way comes home to life, in influencing it, 
or bettering it, or telling upon it in any way 
whatever, we are always ready, for our life's 
sake, to give a patient hearing. 

1. We feel prepared to take kindly to almost 
any doctrine if it will only bear upon our life. 
And surely in the whole range of truth none 
have more points of contact with the heart of 
man than the doctrine of the Power of Sin. In 
the first place, then, let us notice that Sin is a 
Power, and a power which concerns Life. 

There is an old poem which bears the curious 
title of "Strife in Heaven," the idea of which is 
something like this : The poet supposes himself 
to be walking in the streets of the New Jerusa- 
lem, when he comes to a crowd of saints engaged 
in a very earnest discussion. He draws near, 
and listens. The question they are discussing 
is, Which of them is the greatest monument of 
God's saving grace. After a long debate, in 
which each states his case separately, and each 
claims to have been by far the most wonderful 
trophy of God's love in all the multitude of the 
redeemed, it is finally agreed to settle the matter 



154 THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 

by a vote. Vote after vote is taken, and the list 
of competition is gradually reduced until only 
two remain. These are allowed to state their 
case again, and the company stand ready to join 
in the final vote. The first to speak is a very 
old man. He begins by saying that it is a mere 
waste of time to go any further; it is absolutely 
impossible that God's grace could have done 
more for any man in heaven than for him. He 
tells again how he had led a most wicked and 
vicious life — a life filled up with every conceiv- 
able indulgence, and marred with every crime. 
He has been a thief, a liar, a blasphemer, a 
drunkard, and a murderer. On his deathbed, 
at the eleventh hour, Christ came to him and 
he was forgiven. 

The other is also an old man who says, in a 
few words, that he was brought to Christ when 
he was a boy. He had led a quiet and unevent- 
ful life, and had looked forward to heaven as 
early as he could remember. 

The vote is taken ; and, of course, you would 
say it results in favour of the first. But no, the 
votes are all given to the last. We might have 
thought, perhaps, that the one who led the reck- 
less, godless life — he who had lied, thieved, 
blasphemed, murdered; he who was saved by 
the skin of his teeth, just a moment before it 
might have been too late — had the most to thank 
God for. But the old poet knew the deeper truth. 
It required great grace verily to pluck that old 



THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 155 

brand from the burning. It required depths, 
absolutely fathomless, depths of mercy to for- 
give that veteran in sin at the close of all these 
guilty years. But it required more grace to 
keep that other life from guilt through all these 
tempted years. It required more grace to save 
him from the sins of his youth, and keep his 
Christian boyhood pure, to steer him scathless 
through the tempted years of riper manhood, to 
crown his days with usefulness, and his old age 
with patience and hope. Both started in life 
together; to one grace came at the end, to the 
other at the beginning. The first was saved 
from the guilt of sin, the second from the power 
of sin as well. The first was saved from dying 
in sin. But he who became a Christian in his 
boyhood was saved from living in sin. The one 
required just one great act of love at the close 
of life, the other had a life full of love, — it was 
a greater salvation far. His soul was forgiven 
like the other, but his life was redeemed from 
destruction. 

The lesson to be gathered from the old poet's 
parable is that sin is a question of power as much 
as a question of guilt, — that salvation is a ques- 
tion of Life perhaps far more than a question of 
Death. There is something in every man's life 
which needs saving from, something which would 
spoil his life and run off with it into destruction 
if let alone. This principle of destruction is 
the first great fact of Sin — its Power. 



156 THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 

Now any man who watches his life from day 
to day, and especially if he is trying to steer it 
towards a certain moral mark which he has made 
in his mind, has abundant and humiliating evi- 
dence that this Power is busily working in his 
life. He finds that this Power is working against 
him in his life, defeating him at every turn, and 
persistently opposing all the good he tries to 
do. He finds that his natural bias is to break 
away from God and good. Then he is clearly 
conscious that there is an acting ingredient in 
his soul which not only neutralises the inclina- 
tion to follow the path which he knows to be 
straightest and best, but works continually and 
consistently against his better self, and urges 
his life onwards towards a broader path which 
leads to destruction. 

Now it was this road which David had in his 
mind when he thanked God that his life had 
been redeemed, or kept back from destruction. 
It was a beaten track we may be sure in those 
times, as it is to-day, and David knew perfectly 
well when he penned these words that God's 
hand had veritably saved him from ending his 
life along that road. It was not enough in sum- 
ming up his life in his old age, and calling upon 
his soul to bless the Lord for all His benefits, 
to thank Him simply for the forgiveness of his 
sins. God has done far more for him than for- 
give him his sin. He has redeemed his life 
from destruction. He has saved him from the 



THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 157 

all but omnipotent power of Sin. What that 
power was, what that power might have become, 
how it might have broken up and wrecked his 
life a thousand times, let those who remember 
the times when it did break loose in David's life 
recall. How little might we have guessed that 
there was anything in the Psalmist's life to make 
him thank God at its close for keeping it back 
from destruction. Brought up in the secluded 
plains of Bethlehem, and reared in the pure 
atmosphere of country innocence, where could 
the shepherd lad get any taint of sin which could 
develop in after years to a great destroying 
power? And yet he got it — somehow, he got 
it. And even in his innocent boyhood, the fatal 
power lurked there, able enough, willing enough, 
vicious enough, to burst through the early bound- 
aries of his life and wreck it ere it reached its 
prime. All the time he was walking with God ; 
all the time he was planning God's temple; all 
the time he was writing his holy Psalms — 
which make all men wonder at the Psalmist's 
grace ; while he was playing their grave sweet 
melody upon his harp in the ear of God, the 
power of sin was seething and raging in his 
breast, ready to quench the very inspiration God 
was giving him, and ruin his religion and his 
soul for evermore. God kept His hand, we may 
be sure, through David's life on the springs of 
David's sin; and there was nothing so much to 
thank God for, in taking the retrospect of his 



158 THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 

eventful course, than that his life had been re- 
deemed from this first great fact of sin. 

David's salvation, to round off the point with 
an analogy from the old poet, was a much more 
wonderful thing than, say, the dying thief's sal- 
vation. David cost grace far more than the 
dying thief. The dying thief only needed dying 
grace. David needed living grace. The thief 
only needed forgiving grace ; David needed for- 
giving grace and restraining grace. He needed 
grace to keep in his life, to keep it from run- 
ning away. But the thief needed no restraining 
grace. The time for that was past. His life 
had run away. His wild oats were sown, and 
the harvest was heavy and bitter Destruction 
had come upon him already in a hundred forms. 
He had had no antidote to the power of sin, 
which runs so fiercely in every vein of every 
man, and he had destroyed himself. His char- 
acter was ruined, his soul was honey-combed 
through and through with sin. He could not 
have joined in David's psalm that his life was 
saved from destruction. His death was, and the 
wreck of his soul was, but his life was lost to 
God, to the world, and to himself. His life had 
never been redeemed as David's was; so David 
was the greater debtor to God's grace, and few 
men have had greater reason than he to praise 
God in old age for redeeming their life from 
destruction. 

Yes, there is more in salvation than forgive- 



THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 159 

ness. And why? Because there is more in sin 
than guilt. "If I were to be forgiven to-day," 
men who do not know this say, " I would be as 
bad as ever to-morrow. " It is based on the fal- 
lacy, it is based on the heresy, that there is no 
more for a man in religion than forgiveness of 
sins. If there were not it would be little use 
to us. It would have been little use to a man 
like David. And David's life would have been 
incomplete, and David's psalm would have been 
impossible, had he not been able to add to the 
record of God's pardon the record of God's power 
in redeeming his life from destruction. "If I 
were to be forgiven to-day, I would be as bad as 
ever to-morrow." No, that's founded on the 
notion that there 's nothing more in religion 
than forgiveness. If there were not, I say it 
with all solemnity, it would be very little use 
to me. We have all thanked God for the dying 
thief — have we ever thanked God for redeeming 
our life from destruction? Destruction is the 
natural destination of every human soul. It is 
as natural for our soul to go downward as for a 
stone to fall to the ground. Do we ever thank 
God for redeeming our soul from that? And* 
when we thank God we are saved, do we mean 
we are saved from hell, or do we think some- 
times how He has rescued our life from the 
destroying power of sin? 

2. The Stain of Sin. 

The power of sin could never run through a 



160 THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 

man's life without leaving its mark behind. Noth- 
ing in the world ever works without friction. A 
mountain torrent digs a glen in the mountain 
side ; the sea cuts a beach along the shore ; the 
hurricane leaves a thousand fallen witnesses be- 
hind to mark its track. And the great river of 
sin, as it rolls through a human life, leaves a pile 
of ruins here and there as melancholy monuments 
to show where it has been. Nature, with all its 
strength, is a wonderfully delicate machine, and 
everything has its reaction somewhere and some 
time. Nothing is allowed to pass, and nothing 
has so appalling a reaction upon every one and 
everything as sin. 

History is an undying monument of human sin. 
The most prominent thing on its pages are the 
stains — the stains of sin which time has not 
rubbed out. The history of the world, for the 
most part, has been written in the world's blood ; 
and all the reigns of all its emperors and kings 
will one day be lost in one absorbing record of 
one great reign — the one long reign of sin. As 
it has been with history so it is in the world to- 
day. The surface of society is white with leprosy. 
Take away the power of sin to-morrow, the stain 
of sin remains. Whatever the world may suffer 
from want of conviction of the guilt of sin it will 
never be without conviction of its stain. We 
see it in one another's lives. We see it in one 
another's faces. It is the stain of the world's 
sin that troubles the world's conscience. It is 



THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 161 

the stain of the world's sin that troubles philan- 
thropy ; that troubles the Parliament of the coun- 
try ; that troubles the Press of the country. It is 
the stain of the world's sin especially that is mak- 
ing a place in literature for this word sin. It is 
this side of sin that is absorbing the finest writing 
of the day; that is filling our modern poetry; 
that is making a thousand modern books preach 
the doctrine of Retribution, which simply means 
the doctrine of the stain of sin. Society cares 
nothing for thee, is not wise enough to see the 
power of sin, or religious enough to see the guilt 
of sin ; but it cannot fail to see the stain of sin. 
It does not care for the power or the guilt of sin ; 
it cares for the stain of sin, because it must. That 
troubles society. That lies down at its doors, and 
is an eyesore to it. It is a loathsome thing to be 
lying there, and society must do something. So 
this is what it does with it : in one corner it builds 
a prison — this will rid the world of its annoy- 
ance. In another corner it plants a mad-house — 
the sore may fester there unseen. In another it 
raises an hospital ; in a fourth it lays out a grave- 
yard. Prisons, mad-houses, hospitals — these are 
just so much roofing which society has put on to 
hide the stain of sin. It is a good thing in some 
ways that sin has always its stain. Just as pain 
is a good thing to tell that something is wrong, 
so the stain of sin may be a good thing to tell 
that the power has broken loose. Society might 
never trouble itself if it were not for the stain. 
ii 



162 THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 

And in dealing with the stain of sin it sometimes 
may do a very little to maim its power. But it is 
a poor, poor remedy. If it could only see the 
power and try to deal with that — try to get God's 
grace to act on that, the world might be redeemed 
from destruction after all. But it only sees the 
stain when it is too late — the stain which has 
dropped from the wound after the throat of virtue 
has been cut. Surely, when the deed is done, it 
is the least it could do to remove the traces of 
the crime. 

But one need not go to society or history to 
see the stains of sin. We see it in one another's 
lives and in our own lives. Our conscience, for 
instance, is not so quick as it might have been — 
the stains of sin are there, between us and the 
light. We have ignored conscience many a time 
when it spoke, and its voice has grown husky 
and indistinct. Our intellectual life is not so true 
as it might have been — our intellectual sins 
have stained it and spoilt our memory, and taken 
the edge of our sympathy, and filled us with sus- 
picion and one-sided truths, and destroyed the 
delicate power of faith. 

There are few more touching sights than to see a 
man in mature life trying to recover himself from 
the stains of a neglected past. The past itself is 
gone ; but it remains in dark accumulated stains 
upon his life, and he tries to take them off in vain. 
There was a time once, when his robe was white 
and clean. " Keep your garment unspotted from 



THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 163 

the world," they said to him, the kind home- 
voices, as he went out into life. He remembers 
well the first spot on that robe. Even the laden 
years that lie between have no day so dark — 
no spot now lies so lurid red upon his soul as 
that first sin. Then the companion stain came, 
for sins are mostly twins. Then another, and an- 
other, and many more, till count was lost, and 
the whole robe was patterned over with sin stains. 
The power of God has come to make a new man 
of him, but the stains are sunk so deeply in his 
soul that they are living parts of him still. It is 
hard for him to give up the world. It is hard for 
him to be pure. It is hard for him to forget the 
pictures which have been hanging in the galleries 
of his imagination all his life — to forget them 
when he comes to think of God ; to forget them 
when he kneels down to pray; to forget them 
even when he comes to sit in church. The past 
of his life has been all against him ; and even if his 
future is religious, it can never be altogether un- 
affected by the stain of what has been. It is the 
stain of sin which makes repentance so hard in 
adult life, which yields the most impressive argu- 
ment to the young to remember their Creator in 
their youth. For even " the angels," says Ruskin, 
" who rejoice over repentance, cannot but feel an 
uncomprehended pain as they try and try again 
in vain whether they may not warm hard hearts 
with the brooding of their kind wings." 

But if the stain of sin is invisible in moral and 



164 THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 

intellectual life, no one can possibly be blind to it 
in bodily life. We see it in one another's lives, 
but more than that, we see it in one another's 
faces. Vice writes in plain characters, and all 
the world is its copybook. We can read it 
everywhere and on everything around, from pole 
to pole. The drunkard, to take the conspicuous 
example, so stains his bodily life with his sin that 
the seeds of disease are sown which, long after he 
has reformed, will germinate in his death. If all 
the drunkards in the world were to be changed 
to-morrow, the stains of sin in their bodies even 
would doubtless bring a large majority — in a few 
years, less or more — to what was after all really 
a drunkard's grave. 

There is a physical demonstration of sin as well 
as a religious; and no sin can come in among 
the delicate faculties of the mind, or among the 
coarser fibres of the body, without leaving a 
stain, either as a positive injury to the life, or, 
what is equally fatal, as a predisposition to com- 
mit the same sin again. This predisposition is 
always one of the most real and appalling accom- 
paniments of the stain of sin. There is scarcely 
such a thing as an isolated sin in a man's life. 
Most sins can be accounted for by what has 
gone before. Every sin, so to speak, has its 
own pedigree, and is the result of the accu- 
mulated force, which means the accumulated 
stain of many a preparatory sin. 

Thus when Peter began to swear in the High 



THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 16$ 

Priest's palace it was probably not the first time 
Peter swore. A man does not suddenly acquire 
the habit of uttering oaths ; and when it is said of 
Peter, " Then began he to curse and to swear," it 
does not at all mean by " then " and " began " that 
he had not begun it long ago. The legitimate in- 
ference is, that in the rough days of his fisherman's 
life, when the nets got entangled perhaps, or the 
right wind would not blow, Peter had come out 
many a time with an oath to keep his passion 
cool. And now, after years of devoted fellowship 
with Christ, the stain is still so black upon his 
soul that he curses in the very presence of his 
Lord. An outbreak which meets the public eye 
is generally the climax of a series of sins, which 
discretion has been able, till then, to keep out of 
sight. The doctrine of the stain of sin has no 
exceptions ; and few men, we may be sure, can do 
a suddenly notorious wrong without knowing some- 
thing in private of the series to which it belongs. 
But the most solemn fact about this stain of sin 
is that so little can be done for it. It is almost 
indelible. There is a very solemn fact about this 
stain of sin — it can never be altogether blotted 
out. The guilt of sin may be forgiven, the power 
of sin may be broken, but the stains of sin abide. 
When it is said, " He healeth our diseases," it 
means indeed that we may be healed; but the 
ravages which sin has left must still remain. 
Small-pox may be healed, but it leaves its mark 
behind. A cut limb may be cured, but the scar 



166 THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 

remains for ever. An earthquake is over in three 
minutes, but centuries after the ground is still 
rent into gulfs and chasms which ages will never 
close. So the scars of sin, on body and mind and 
soul, live with us in silent retribution on our past, 
and go with us to our graves. 

And the stain does not stop with our lives. 
Every action of every man has an ancestry and a 
posterity in other lives. The stains of life have 
power to spread. The stains of other lives have 
crossed over into our lives, stains from our lives 
into theirs. " I am a part/' says the Laureate, 
" of all that I have met." A hundred years hence 
we all must live again — in thoughts, in tenden- 
cies, in influences, perhaps in sins and stains in 
other lives. The sins of the father shall be 
visited on the children. The blight on the 
vicious parent shall be visited on the insane off- 
spring. The stain on the intemperate mother 
shall reappear in the blasted lives of her drunken 
family. Finer forms of sin in the same way — 
of companion on companion, of brother or sister, 
of teacher and pupil. For God Himself has 
made the law, that the curse must follow the 
breach ; and even He who healeth our diseases 
may never interfere with the necessary stain of 
a sinful life. 

" Take my influence," cried a sinful man, who 
was dying; " take my influence, and bury it with 
me." He was going to be with Christ, his influ- 
ence had been against Him ; he was leaving it 



THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 167 

behind. As a conspirator called by some act of 
grace to his sovereign's table remembers with 
unspeakable remorse the assassin whom he left 
in ambuscade at his king's palace gate, so he 
recalls the traitorous years and the influences 
which will plot against his Lord when he is in 
eternity. Oh, it were worth being washed from 
sin, were it only to escape the possibility of a 
treachery like that. It were worth living a holy 
and self-denying life, were it only to join the 
choir invisible of those almighty dead who live 
again in lives made better by our presence. 

3. But now, lastly, we come to the third great 
fact of sin, its guilt. And we find ourselves face 
to face with the greatest question of all, " What 
has God to say to all this mass of sin? " 

Probably every one will acknowledge that his 
life bears witness to the two first facts of sin. 
Starting with this admission, a moment's thought 
lands us in a greater admission. We all acknowl- 
edge sin, therefore we must all acknowledge our- 
selves to be guilty. Whether we feel it or no, 
guilt is inseparable from sin. Physical evil may 
make a man sorry, but moral evil makes him 
guilty. It may not make him feel guilty — we 
are speaking of facts — he is guilty. So we are 
guilty for our past lives. We may be sorry for 
the past. But it is not enough that we are sorry, 
we are guilty for the past. We are more than 
sinners, we are criminals. This is where the 
literary conception of sin is altogether defective 



168 THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 

and must be supplemented. It knows nothing, 
and can teach nothing, of the guilt of a sinners 
soul. It is when we come to God that we learn 
this. God is our Father, but God is our Judge. 
And when we know that, our sin takes on a 
darker colouring. It grows larger than our life, 
and suddenly seems to be infinite. The whole 
world, the whole universe, is concerned in it. 
Sin only made us recoil from ourselves before ; 
now it makes God recoil from us. We are out of 
harmony with God. Our iniquities have sepa- 
rated us from God, and in some mysterious way 
we have come to be answerable to Him. We 
feel that the Lord has turned and looked upon us 
as He looked at Peter, and we can only go out 
and weep bitterly. 

If these experiences are foreign to our souls, 
we must feel our sense of guilt when we come to 
look at Christ. Christ could not move through 
the world without the mere spectacle of His life 
stirring to their very depths the hearts of every 
one whose path He crossed. And Christ cannot 
move through the chambers of our thoughts with- 
out the dazzling contrast to ourselves startling 
into motion the sense of burning shame and sin. 
But, above all, Christ could not die upon the cross 
without witnessing to all eternity of the appalling 
greatness of human guilt. And it is the true 
climax of conviction which the prophet speaks 
of: "They shall look on Me whom they have 
pierced, and they shall mourn? 



THE THREE FACTS OF SIN 169 

This conviction of sin, in this the deepest sense, 
is not a thing to talk about, but to feel ; and when 
it is felt, it cannot be talked about; it is too deep 
for words. It comes as an unutterable woe upon 
the life, and rests there, in dark sorrow and heavi- 
ness, till Christ speaks Peace. 

Such, in outline, are the three facts of sin. 
They are useful in two ways : they teach us our- 
selves, and they teach us God. It is along these 
three lines that you will find salvation. Run your 
eye along the first — the power of sin — and you 
will understand Jesus. Thou shalt call His name 
Jesus, because He saves His people from their 
sins. Look at the second — the stain of sin — 
and you will understand the righteousness of 
Christ; you will see the need of the one pure 
life ; you will be glad that there has been one who 
has kept His garment unspotted from the world. 

Look at the third, and you will see the Lamb 
of God taking away the sin of the world. You 
will understand the atonement ; you will pray, — 

" Let the water and the blood, 
From Thy riven side which flowed, 
Be of sin the double cure, 
Cleanse me from its guilt and power." 



NUMBER VIII 



The Three Facts 
of Salvation 



SUPPLEMENT TO 

"THE THREE FACTS OF SIN" 



" Who forgiveth all thine iniquities j 
Who healeth all thy diseases; 
Who redeemeth thy life from destruction" 

Ps. ciii. 3, 4. 

LAST Sabbath we were engaged with the 
three facts of Sin. To-day we come to 
the three facts of salvation. 
The three facts of sin were : — 

1. The Guilt of Sin — "Who forgiveth all 
thine iniquities." 

2. The Stain of Sin — "Who healeth all thy 
diseases." 

3. The Power of Sin — " Who redeemeth thy 
life from destruction." 

And now we come to the three facts of salva- 
tion — the emphasis on the first words of each 
clause instead of the last. 

1. Who forgiveth. 2. Who healeth. 3. Who 
redeemeth. 

Every one who comes into the world experi- 
ences less or more of the three facts of sin ; and 



THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 171 

every one is allowed to live on in the world 
mainly that he may also experience the three 
great facts of salvation. God keeps the most 
of us alive from day to day with this one object. 
Sin has got hold of us, and He is giving us time 
— time for grace to get the upper hand of it, 
time to work out the three facts of salvation in 
our lives with fear and trembling against the 
three facts of sin. Our being, therefore, lies 
between these two great sets of facts, the dark 
set and the bright, and life is just the battlefield 
on which they fight it out. If the bright side 
win, it is a bright life — saved. If the dark side, 
it is a dark life — lost. 

We have seen how the three dark facts have 
already begun to work upon our life ; and that 
they are not only working at our life, but sapping 
it, and preying upon it every hour of the day. 
And now we stand face to face with the question 
which is wrung out from our life by the very sin 
which is destroying it, " What must I do to be 
saved? " 

The first fact about which we would ask this 
question — to begin once more with the fact 
which most conspicuously concerns life — is the 
fact of the Power of Sin. What must I do to be 
saved from the power of sin? What most of us 
feel we really want religion to do for us, though 
it is not the deepest experience, is to save us 
from something which we feel in our life — a 
very terrible something which is slowly dragging 



172 THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 

our life downward to destruction. This some- 
thing has gained an unaccountable hold upon us ; 
it seems to make us go wrong whether we will or 
no, and instead of exhausting itself with all the 
attempts it has made upon our life in the past, it 
seems to get stronger and stronger every day. 
Even the Christian knows that this strange wild 
force is just at his very door, and if he does not 
pray to-morrow morning, for instance, before the 
day is out it will have wrought some mischief in 
his life. If he does not pray, in the most natural 
way in the world, without any effort of his own, 
without even thinking about it, it will necessarily 
come to the front and make his life go wrong. 
Now, wherever this comes from, or whatever it 
is, it is a great fact, and the first practical ques- 
tion in religion that rises to many a mind is this, 
" What must I do to be saved from this inevi- 
table, and universal, and terrible fact of Sin?" 

We have probably all made certain experi- 
ments upon this fact already, and we could all 
give some explanation, at least, of what we are 
doing to be saved. 

If some of us were asked, for instance, what 
was our favourite fact of salvation for resisting 
the power of sin, we might say the fact that we 
were doing our best. Well, it is a great thing 
for any man to be doing his best. But two ques- 
tions will test the value of this method of resist- 
ing the power of sin. In the first place, How is 
your best doing? In the second place, Do you 



THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 173 

think you could not do better? As to how your 
best is doing, you would probably admit that, on 
the whole, it was not doing very well. Your 
best, in fact, if you were to be candid, has not 
been much to boast of after all. And as regards 
your not doing better you might also admit that 
in some ways, perhaps, you could. The fact of 
salvation then is evidently a poor one, as far as 
results are concerned, and may be judiciously 
laid aside. 

Then another experiment people try to break 
the power of sin is to get thoroughly absorbed in 
something else — business, or literature, or some 
favourite pursuit. It is in one's spare hours sin 
comes to us and we try to have no sin by having 
no spare hours. But our very preoccupation 
may then be one continuous sin. And, besides, 
if a man have no spare hours, he will have spare 
minutes, and sin comes on generally in a minute. 
Most sins, indeed, are done in minutes. They 
take hours to execute, it may be ; but in a mo- 
ment the plot is hatched, the will consents, and 
the deed is done. Preoccupation then is clearly 
no saviour. 

Then there are others who withdraw from the 
world altogether, to break with sin, and live the 
solitary life of the recluse. But they forget that 
sin is not in the sinful world without, but in the 
sinful heart within, and that it enters the hermit's 
solitary cell as persistently as the wicked world 
around. So solitude comes to be no saviour. 



174 THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 

And there are others still who take refuge in 
religiousness. In going to church, for instance, 
and in religious society and books. But there is 
not necessarily any more power to resist sin 
within the four walls of a church or the pages 
of a religious book, than between the walls of a 
theatre or the boards of a novel. There may be 
less temptation there, not necessarily more power. 
For there is no strength in mere religious cere- 
monies to cancel the power of sin, and many a 
man proves this, after years and years of church, 
by wakening to find the power of sin in his breast 
unchanged, and breaking out, perhaps, in every 
form of vice. Neither is religiousness, therefore, 
any escape from the dominion of sin. 

And lastly, some of us have resort to doc- 
trines. We have got the leading points of cer- 
tain doctrines worn into our minds, and because 
these have a religious name we are apt to think 
they have also a religious power. In reality, 
while dealing with the theory of grace and sin, 
we may leave the power to resist it untouched. 
And many a pen has been busy with a book on 
the doctrine of sin while the life which employed 
it was going to destruction for want of salvation 
from its power. 

There is one doctrine especially with which 
the word salvation is most often connected and 
to which many look for their deliverance from 
the power of indwelling sin. And it may seem a 
startling statement to make, but it will emphasise 



THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 175 

a distinction which cannot be too clearly drawn, 
that even the atonement itself is not the answer 
to the question, "What must I do to be saved 
from the power of sin?" The answer entirely 
depends on the atonement, but it is not the 
atonement. The atonement is not the fact of 
salvation which saves the sinner from the power 
of sin. If you believed in the atonement to-day, 
if you were absolutely assured that your past 
sins were all forgiven, that would be no criterion 
that you would not be as bad as ever again to- 
morrow. The atonement, therefore, is not the 
fact which deals with the power of sin. The 
atonement deals with a point. We are coming 
to that. Just now we are talking of a life. We 
are looking out for something which will deal 
with something in our life — something which 
will redeem our life from destruction. And a 
man may believe the atonement whose life is not 
redeemed from destruction. 

You have gone out into the country on a sum- 
mer morning, and as you passed some little rustic 
mill, you saw the miller come out to set his sim- 
ple machinery agoing for the day. He turned 
on the sluice, but the water-wheel would not 
move. Then, with his strong arm, he turned it 
once or twice, then left it to itself to turn busily 
all the day. It is a sorry illustration in detail, 
but its principle means this, that the atonement 
is the first great turn as it were which God gives 
in the morning of conversion to the wheel of the 



176 THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 

Christian's life. Without it nothing more would 
be possible : alone it would not be enough. The 
water of life must flow in a living stream all 
through the working day and keep pouring its 
power into it ceaselessly till the life and the work 
are done. 

Now, practically everything depends in salva- 
tion upon the clearness with which this great 
truth is recognised. Sin is a power in our life; let 
us fairly understand that it can only be met by 
another power. The fact of sin works all through 
our life. The death of Christ, which is the atone- 
ment, reconciles us to God, makes our religion 
possible, puts us in the way of the power which 
is to come against our sin and deliver our life 
from destruction. But the Water of Life, which 
flows from the life of Christ, is the power itself. 
He redeemeth my life, by His life, from destruc- 
tion. This is the power, Paul says, which re- 
deemed his life from destruction. Christ's life, 
not His death, living in his life, absorbing it, 
impregnating it, transforming it. " Christ," as he 
confessed, " in Me" And this, therefore, is the 
meaning of a profound sentence in which Paul 
states the true answer to the question, What must 
I do to be saved ? records this first great fact of 
salvation and pointedly distinguishes it from the 
other. " If when we were enemies we were recon^ 
ciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, 
being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life" 
(Rom. v. 10), 



THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 177 

" We shall be saved by His life? says Paul. 
Paul meant no disrespect to the atonement when 
he said, " We shall be saved by his life/' He 
was bringing out in relief one of the great facts of 
salvation. If God gives atoning power with one 
hand, and power to save the life from destruction 
with the other, there is no jealousy between. 
Both are from God. If you call the one justifica- 
tion and the other sanctification, God is the 
author of them both. If Paul seems to take 
something from the one doctrine and add it to 
the other, he takes nothing from God. Atone- 
ment is from God. Power to resist sin is from 
God. When we say we shall be saved by the 
death of Christ, it is true. When Paul says, " We 
shall be saved by His life," it is true. Christ is 
all and in all, the beginning and the end. Only 
when we are speaking of one fact of sin, let us 
speak of the corresponding fact of grace. When 
the thing we want is power to redeem our life 
from destruction, let us apply the gift which God 
has given us for our life, and for guilt the gift of 
guilt. When an Israelite was bitten in the wilder- 
ness, he never thought of applying manna to the 
wound. The manna was for his life. But he 
did think of applying the brazen serpent. The 
manna would never have cured his sin; nor 
would the brazen serpent have kept him from 
starving. Suppose he had said, " Now I am 
healed by this serpent, I feel cured, and I need 
not eat this manna any more. The serpent has 



178 THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 

done it all, and I am well." The result would 
have been, of course, that he would have died. 
The man, to be sure, was cured, but he has to live, 
and if he eats no manna his life must languish, go 
to destruction, die. Without taking any trouble 
about it, simply by the inevitable processes of 
nature, he would have died. The manna was 
God's provision to redeem his life from destruc- 
tion, after the serpent had redeemed it from 
death. And if he did nothing to stop the natural 
progress of destruction, in the natural course of 
things, he must die. Now there is no jealousy 
between these two ' things — the manna is from 
God and the serpent is from God. But they are 
different gifts for different things. The serpent 
gave life, but could not keep life; the manna 
kept life, but could not give life. Therefore, 
the Israelites were saved by the serpent, but they 
did not try to eat the serpent. 

To apply this to the case in hand. The atone- 
ment of Christ is the brazen serpent. Christ's 
life is the manna — the bread of life. Our sins 
are not forgiven by bread, nor are our lives sup- 
ported by death. Our life is not redeemed from 
destruction by the atonement, nor kept from day 
to day from the power of sin by the atonement. 
Our life is not redeemed from destruction by the 
death of Christ, nor kept from day to day by the 
death of Christ. But we are saved, as Paul says, 
by his " life" We cannot live upon death. Mors 
janua vitce — death is the gate of life. And after 



THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 179 

we have entered the gateway by the death of 
Christ, we shall be saved by His life. 

To sum up, therefore. It is one thing, there- 
fore, to be saved by the death of Christ, and 
another to be saved by His life ; and while both 
expressions are correct, to talk of being saved by 
the death of Christ is not so scriptural as to talk 
of being saved by the life of Christ ; and Paul, 
with his invariable conciseness on important 
points, has brought out the facts of salvation 
with profound insight in the pregnant antithesis 
already quoted, " When we were enemies we were 
reconciled by the death of Christ, now we shall be 
saved by His life." 

What first fact of salvation, therefore, is to be 
brought to bear upon the first great fact of sin, 
is not our own efforts, our own religiousness, our 
own doctrine, the atonement, or the death of 
Christ, but the power of the life of Christ. 
He redeemeth my life from destruction. How? 
By His life. This is the fact of salvation. It 
takes life to redeem life — power to resist power. 
Sin is a ceaseless, undying power in our life. A 
ceaseless, undying power must come against it. 
And there is only one such power in the universe 
— only one, which has a chance against sin : the 
power of the living Christ. God knew the power 
of sin in a human soul when He made so great 
provision. He knew how great it was ; He cal- 
culated it. Then He sent the living Christ 
against it. It is the careful and awful estimate 



180 THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 

of the power of sin. God saw that nothing else 
would do. It would not do to start our religion, 
then leave us to ourselves. It would not do with 
hearts like ours, yearning to sin, to leave us with 
religiousness or moral philosophy or doctrine. 
Christ must come Himself, and live with us. He 
must come and make His abode with us. He can- 
not trust us from His sight ; so that when we live 
it shall be not we that live, but Christ living in us, 
and the life which we are now living in the flesh 
must be lived by the power of the Son of God. 

What, then, must I do to be saved? Receive 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. 
Slave of a thousand sins, receive the Lord Jesus 
Christ into thy life, and thy life, thy far-spent 
life, shall yet be redeemed from destruction. 
Receive the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou who 
hast lived in the far famine land shalt return and 
live once more by thy Father's side. Thou seek- 
est not a welcome to thy Father's house — of thy 
welcome thou hast never been afraid. But thou 
seekest a livelihood ; thou seekest Power. Thou 
seekest power to be pure, to be true, to be free 
from the power of sin. " What must I do to be 
saved from that? What power will free me from 
that?" The power of the living Christ! "As 
many as received Him, to them gave He power 
to become the sons of God." " Power to become 
the sons of God" — the great fact of salvation. 
Receive the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
saved. {Luther Santa Scala^) 



THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 181 

Christ, therefore, is the power of God unto sal- 
vation — the counter-fact to the power of sin unto 
destruction. Christ is the way — He is also the 
Truth and the Life. This power, this life, is 
within our reach each moment of our life; as 
near, as free, as abundant as the air we breathe. 
A breath of prayer in the morning, and the 
morning life is sure. A breath of prayer in the 
evening, and the evening blessing comes. So 
our life is redeemed from destruction. Breath by 
breath our life comes into us. Inch by inch it is 
redeemed from destruction. So much prayer to- 
day — so many inches redeemed to-day. So 
much water of life to-day — so many turns of the 
great wheel of life to-day. Therefore, if we want 
to be saved — whosoever will, let him take of the 
water of life freely. If you want to be saved, 
breathe the breath of life. And if you cannot 
breathe, let the groans which cannot be uttered 
go up to God, and the power will come. To all 
of us alike, if we but ask we shall receive. For 
God makes surpassing allowances, and He will 
do unto the least of us exceeding abundantly 
above all that we ask or think. 

Secondly, and more briefly, the second fact of 
sin is the stain of sin, the second fact of salvation. 
" He healeth all thy diseases." The stain of sin 
is a very much more complicated thing even than 
the power of sin ; and that for this reason — that 
most of it lies outside our own life. If it only 



182 THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 

lay in dark blotches upon our own life, we might 
set to work to rub it out. But it is a blind vision 
cf sin which confines has crossed over into other 
lives all through the years that have gone, and 
left its awful mark — our mark, on every soul we 
touched since the most distant past. 

A young man once lay upon his deathbed. 
He was a Christian, but for many days a black 
cloud had gathered upon his brow. Just before 
his last breath, he beckoned to the friends around 
his bed. " Take my influence," he said, " and 
bury it with me." He stood on the very thresh- 
old of glory. But the stain of sin was burning 
hot upon his past. Bury his influence with him ! 
No, his influence will remain. His life has gone 
to be with God, who gave it ; but his influence — 
he has left no influence for Christ. His future 
will be for ever with the Lord. The unburied 
past remains behind, perhaps, for ever to be 
against him. The black cloud which hangs over 
many a dying brow means the stain of an influ- 
ence lost for Christ — means with many a man 
who dies a Christian, that though his guilt has 
been removed and his life redeemed from destruc- 
tion, the infection of his past lurks in the world 
still, and his diseases fester in open sores among 
all the companions of his life. 

What must I do to be saved from the stain of 
sin? Gather up your influence, and see how 
much has been for Christ. Then undo all that 
has been against Him. It will never be healed 



THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 183 

till then. This is the darkest stain upon your 
life. The stain of sin concerns your own soul, 
but that is a smaller matter. That can be undone 
— in part. There are open sores enough in our 
past life to make even heaven tremble. But God 
is healing them. He is blotting them from His 
own memory and from ours. If the stains that 
were there had lingered, life would have been a 
long sigh of agony. But salvation has come to 
our soul. God is helping you to use the means 
for repairing a broken life. He restoreth thy 
soul, He healeth all thy diseases. But thy 
brother's soul, and thy brother's diseases? The 
worst of thy stains have spread far and wide 
without thyself; and God will only heal them, 
perhaps, by giving you grace to deal with them. 
You must retrace your steps over that unburied 
past, and undo what you have done. You must 
go to the other lives which are stained with your 
blood-red stains and rub them out. Perhaps you 
did not lead them into their sin ; but you did not 
lead them out of it. You did not show them you 
were a Christian. You left a worse memory with 
them than your real one. You pretended you 
were just like them — that your sources of hap- 
piness were just the same. You did not tell them 
you had a power which kept your life from sin. 
You did not take them to the closet you had at 
home, and let them see you on your knees, nor 
tell them of your Bible which was open twice a 
day. And all these negatives were stains and 



1 84 THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 

sins. It is a great injustice to do to any one we 
know — the worst turn we could do a friend, to 
keep the best secret back, and let him go as 
calmly to hell as we are going to heaven. 

If we cannot bury our influence, thank God if 
here and there we can undo it still. The other 
servant in the kitchen, the clerk on the next stool, 
the lady who once lived in the next house, we 
must go to them, by the grace of God, and take 
the stain away. And let the thought that much 
that we have done can never be undone, that 
many whose lives have suffered from our sins 
have gone away into eternity with the stains still 
unremoved, that when we all stand round the 
throne together, even from the right hand of 
the judgment seat of Christ, we may behold on 
the left among the lost the stains of our own sin, 
still livid on some soul — let this quicken our 
steps as we go to obliterate the influence of our 
past, and turn our fear into a safeguard as we try 
to keep our future life for Christ. 

The second fact of salvation, therefore, is to be 
effected by God in part and by ourselves in part 
— by God as regards ourselves ; by God and our- 
selves as regards others. He is to heal our dis- 
eases, and we are to spread the balm He gives us 
wherever we have spread our sin. 

Lastly, the third great fact of sin is guilt — the 
third fact of salvation is forgiveness. "He forgiveth 
all thine iniquities." The first, question we asked 



THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 185 

came out of our life ; the second mostly from our 
memory ; but the third rises up out of conscience. 

Our first cry, as we looked at our future, was, 
" Where can I get power? " Now we are looking 
at our past, and the question is, " Where can I 
get pardon ? " The questions which conscience 
sends up to us are always the deepest questions. 
And the man who has never sent up the ques- 
tion, " Where can I get pardon ?" has never been 
into his conscience to find out the deepest want 
he has. It is not enough for him to look life- 
ward ; he must also look Godward. And it is 
not enough to discover the stain of his past, and 
cry out, " I have sinned." But he must see the 
guilt of his life and cry, " I have sinned against 
God" The fact of salvation which God has pro- 
vided to meet the fact of guilt, although it is the 
most stupendous fact of all, only comes home to 
man when he feels a criminal and stands like a 
guilty sinner, for pardon at God's bar. 

It is not enough for him then to invoke God's 
strength against the power of sin. Just as the 
fact which meets the guilt of sin, as we have 
seen, can never meet the power of sin, so the 
fact which meets the power of sin can never meet 
the fact of guilt. Manna was what was required 
for a man's life ; but it is no use against his guilt. 
// is nothing that he makes a good resolution not 
to do wrong any more, that he asked Christ to 
come and live with him and break the power of 
sin, and redeem his life from destruction. God 



1 86 THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 

has something to say to him before that. Some- 
thing must happen to him before that. He must 
come and give an account of himself before that. 
The good resolution is all very laudable for the 
days to come, but what about the past? God 
wants to know about the past. It may be conven- 
ient for us to forget the past, but God cannot forget 
it. We have done wrong, and wrong-doing must 
be punished. Wrong-doing must be punished — 
must ; this is involved in one of the facts of sin. 
Therefore the punishment of wrong-doing must 
be involved in one of the facts of salvation. It is 
not in the first two. It must be somewhere in this. 
Now the punishment of sin is death. In the 
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. 
Therefore death is the punishment which must be 
in one of the facts of salvation. It was not in the 
other two. It must be somewhere in this. It 
will not meet the case if the sinner professes his 
penitence and promises humbly never to do the 
like again. It will not meet the case if he comes 
on his knees to apologise to God, and ask Him 
simply to forget that he has sinned, or beg Him 
to have pity on the misfortunes of his past. God 
did not say, " In the day thou eatest thereof I 
will pity thy misfortunes, in the day thou eatest 
thereof thou shalt surely apologise, or thou shalt 
surely repent" but " in the day thou eatest thereof 
thou shalt surely die" So death, and nothing 
less than death, must be in the fact of salvation 
from the guilt of sin, if such salvation is to be. 



THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 187 

This fact, this most solemn necessity under- 
stood and felt, the rest is plain. We all know 
Some one died. We all know Who deserved to 
die. We all know Who did die. We know we 
were not wounded for our transgressions, we were 
not bruised for our iniquities. But we know Who 
was. The Lord hath not dealt with us according 
to our iniquities ; but we know with Whom He 
has. We know Who bare our sins in His own 
body on the tree, — One who had none of His 
own. We know who was lifted up like the ser- 
pent in the wilderness — Him who died the just 
for the unjust. If we know this, we know the 
great fact of salvation, for it is this. 

It only remains to answer one question more. 
How is a poor sinner to make this great fact his? 
And the answer is, By trusting Christ. He has 
nothing else wherewith to make it his. The 
atonement is a fact. Forgiveness is a fact. Let 
him believe it. He does not understand it. He 
is not asked to understand it. The proper way 
to accept a fact is to believe it ; and whosoever 
believeth in Him shall not perish, but have ever- 
lasting life. It is well to understand it, and you 
may try to understand it if you can, but till then 
you must believe it. For it is a fact, and your 
understanding it will not make it less or more a 
fact. The death of Christ will always be a fact. 
Forgiveness of sins will always be a fact. Son, 
accept the facts of sin : accept the facts of grace. 
The atonement, you say, confuses you. You do 



1 88 THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 

not understand its bearings ; the more you think 
and hear and read, the more mysterious it be- 
comes. And well it may, well it may ! 

A student went to a professor of theology not 
long ago, and asked him how long it took him to 
understand the atonement. He answered, all his 
life. Thinking perhaps there might be some mis- 
take, the young man went to another professor, 
who taught the very doctrine in his class. " How 
long did it take you, sir," he asked, " to under- 
stand the atonement ?" The professor thought a 
moment, then looked him in the face. " Eternity" 
he said, "Eternity; and I won't understand it then." 

We have been dealing to-day with facts; we 
need not be distressed if we do not understand 
them. God's love — how could we? God's for- 
giveness — how could we? "He forgiveth all 
mine iniquities." It is a fact. What proof could 
commend itself if God's fact will not do? Verify 
the fact as you may, find out as much about it as 
you may ; only accept it — accept it first. You 
are keeping your life waiting while you are find- 
ing out about it. You are keeping your salvation 
waiting. And it is better to spend a year in igno- 
rance than live a day unpardoned. You are 
staining other lives while you are waiting : your 
influence is against Christ while you are waiting, 
and it is better to spend your life in ignorance 
than let your influence be against Christ. Most 
things in religion are matters of simple faith. But 
when we come to the atonement, somehow we all 



THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION 189 

become rationalists. We want to see through it 
and understand it — as if it were finite like our- 
selves, as if it could ever be compassed by our 
narrow minds — as if God did not know that we 
never could fathom it when He said, " Believe it," 
instead of " Understand it." We are not ration- 
alists when we come to the love of God, or to 
faith, or prayer. We do not ask for a theory of 
love before we begin to love, or a theory of prayer 
before we begin to pray. We just begin. Well, 
just begin to believe in forgiveness. When they 
brought the sick man once to Jesus, He just said, 
" Man, thy sins are forgiven thee," and the man 
just believed it. He did not ask, " But why should 
you forgive me, and how do you mean to forgive 
me? and I don't see any connection between your 
forgiveness and my sin." No ; he took the fact. 
" Immediately he rose up, and departed to his own 
house, glorifying God." The fact is, if we would 
come to Christ just now, we should never ask any 
questions. Our minds would be full of Him. 
We should be in the region of eternal facts, and 
we should just believe them. At least, we should 
believe Him ; and He is the Saviour, the sum of 
all the facts of salvation — the one Saviour from 
all the facts of sin. If you will not receive salva- 
tion as a fact, receive the Lord Jesus Christ as a 
gift — we ask no questions about a gift. Receive 
the Lord Jesus Christ as a gift, and thou shalt be 
saved from the power and the stain and the guilt 
of sin, for His is the power and the glory. Amen. 



NUMBER IX 

"What Is 
Your Life?" 

James iv. 14. 

TO-MORROW, the first day of a new year, 
is a day of wishes. To-day, the last day 
of an old year, is a day of questions. To-morrow 
is a time of anticipation ; to-day a time of reflec- 
tion. To-morrow our thoughts will go away out 
to the coming opportunities, and the larger vistas 
which the future is opening up to even the most 
commonplace of us. To-day our minds wander 
among buried memories, and our hearts are full 
of self-questioning thoughts of what our past has 
been. 

But if to-morrow is to be a day of hope, to- 
day must be a day of thought. If to-morrow is 
to be a time of resolution, to-day must be a day 
of investigation. And if we were to search the 
Bible through for a basis for this investigation, 
we should nowhere find a better than this ques- 
tion, " What is your life ? " 

We must notice, however, that life is used 
here in a peculiar sense — a narrow sense, some 
would say. The question does not mean, " What 



"WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 191 

quality is your life?" " What are you making 
of life?" "How are you getting on with it?" 
" How much higher is the tone of it this year 
than last?" It has a more limited reference 
than this. It does not refer so much to quality 
of life as to quantity of life. It means, " How 
much life have you got? " " What value do you 
set upon your life?" " How long do you think 
your life will last?" "How does it compare 
with eternity? " 

And there are reasons which make this form 
of the question particularly appropriate, not only 
to this last day of the year, but, apart altogether 
from that, to the state of much religious thought 
upon the subject at the present moment. 

These reasons are mainly these two : 

1. There is a large school just now who 
utterly ignore this question. 

2. There is a large school who utterly spoil it. 
There may be said to be two ways of looking 

at life, each of which finds favour just now with 
a wide circle of people : 

1. The theory that life is everything. 

2. The theory that life is nothing. 
Or, adding the converse to these : 

1. The theory that life is everything and eter- 
nity nothing. 

2. The theory that life is nothing and eternity 
everything. 

Now, those who hold the first of these, object 
to the time-view of life altogether. Now there 



192 "WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 

can be no doubt that this is the favourite of the 
two. For one thing, it is decidedly the fashion- 
able view. It is the view culture takes, and 
many thinking men, and many thoughtful and 
modern books. Life, these say, life is the great 
thing. We know something about life. We are 
in it — it is pulsating all around us. We feel its 
greatness and reality. But the other does not 
press upon us in the same way. It is far off and 
mystical. It takes a kind of effort even to be- 
lieve it Therefore let us keep to what we know, 
what we are in, what we are sure of. 

The strength of this school is in their great 
view of life ; their weakness and great error, in 
their little view of time. Their enthusiasm for 
the quality of life makes them rush to the oppo- 
site extreme and ignore its quantity. The thought 
that life is short has little influence with them. 
They simply refuse to let it weigh with them, 
and when pressed with thoughts of immortality, 
or time-views of human life, they affirm, with a 
kind of superiority, that they have too much to 
do with the present to trouble themselves with 
sentimentalisms about the future. 

The second view is the more antiquated, per- 
haps the more illiterate. Life, with it, is nothing 
at all. It is a bubble, a vapour, a shadow. 
Eternity is the great thing. Eternity is the signi- 
ficant thing. Eternity is the only thing. Life is 
a kind of unfortunate preliminary — a sort of 
dismal antechamber, where man must wait, and be 



"WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 193 

content for a little with the view of eternity from 
the windows. His turn to go is coming; mean- 
time let him fret through the unpleasant interval 
as resignedly as he can, and pray God to speed 
its close. 

The strength of this school is that it recognises 
time and eternity for itself. Its weakness, and its 
great error, that it refuses to think of life and 
spoils the thought of eternity for those who do. 
The first school requires to be told that life is 
short ; this, so far from having to be told that it 
is short, have to be told that life is long — for 
life to it is nothing. 

It is clear, of course, that each of these views 
is the natural recoil from the other. The mis- 
take is that each has recoiled too far. The life- 
something theory cannot help recoiling from the 
life-nothing theory; but it need not recoil into 
life-everything. So the eternity-something theory 
cannot help recoiling from the eternity-nothing 
theory ; but it need not recoil into eternity-every- 
thing. 

It is plain, then, that both these theories are 
wrong, and yet not altogether wrong. There is a 
great deal of truth in each — so much, indeed, 
that if the parts of truth which each contains 
were joined into one, they would form a whole — 
the trtith. And if the sides were nearly equal, — 
as many who think life nothing as think life every- 
thing, — there could be nothing more useful than 
to attempt to strike the harmony between. But 

13 



194 "WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 

the sides are not equal, and hence the better ex- 
ercise will be to deal with the side which has the 
truth the furthest in arrear. 

This, undoubtedly, is the life-school — the life- 
everything school. The other is, comparatively, 
a minority. At least, those who hold the ex- 
treme form of it are a minority. It is a more 
obvious and striking truth that life is something. 
And it is not difficult to convince the man who 
makes eternity everything to allow something 
to life; but to get the man who makes life 
everything to grant a little to eternity is a harder 
thing to attempt; for the power of the world 
to come may be yet unfelt and unproved, and 
the race of life so swift that the rival flight 
of time may still remain unseen. 

Besides, there are mainly two great classes 
who swell the ranks of the majority, who refuse 
to think of time. 

1. The great busy working and thinking class, 
who are too careful of time ever to think of eter- 
nity as its successor. These have too little time 
to think of time. 

2. The great lazy worldly class, who are too 
careless of time ever to think that it will cease. 
These have too much time to think of time — so 
much of it that they think there will be always 
much of it. 

Now it is to these two classes that this old 
year's question comes home with special power, 
"What is your life ? ,J And it is no reason why 



"WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?"" 195 

the majority should decline to face the question 
that a fanatical minority have nauseated the 
subject by the exaggeration of eternity. For 
if these men suffer in their lives by treating life 
as a thing of no importance, the other classes 
certainly suffer more by exaggerating life at the 
tremendous expense of eternity. 

The great objection to thinking about eternity, 
or, to take the other side, the brevity of life, 
is that it is not practical. The life-school pro- 
fesses to be eminently utilitarian. It will have 
nothing to do with abstractions, nothing that 
does not directly concern life. Anything that 
is outside the sphere of action is of little conse- 
quence to practical men. The members of this 
school feel themselves in the rush of the world's 
work, and it is something to think (to think) 
of that. It is something to live in the thick 
of it, to yield to the necessities of it, to share its 
hopes, and calmly endure its discipline of care. 
But when you leave life, they protest, you are 
away from the present and the real. You are 
off into poetry and sentiment, and the medita- 
tions you produce may be interesting for philoso- 
phers and dreamers, but they are not for men 
who take their stand on the greatness of life 
and crave to be allowed to leave the mystical 
alone. 

Now the answer to that — and it may be thor- 
oughly answered — may be given in a word. 
First of all, who told you eternity was nothing? 



196 "WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 

Who told you it was an unpractical, unprofitable 
dream? Who told you to go on with your work 
and let time and other abstractions alone? It 
was certainly not God. God takes exactly the 
opposite view. He is never done insisting on the 
importance of the question. " O that they were 
wise . . . that they would consider their latter 
end " — that is what God says. " Make me to 
know mine end, and the measure of my days 
what it is " — that is what David, the man after 
God's own heart, says. " Teach me to number 
my days" — that is what Moses, the friend of 
God, says. 

And you will notice the reason God gives for 
thinking about these things. It was enough, 
indeed, for Him to say it, without any reason; 
but He has chosen to give us one. Why are we 
to number our days? That we may apply our 
hearts unto wisdom. That is the reason for think- 
ing about time. It is to make us wise. Perhaps 
you have thought this is merely a piece of senti- 
ment, a flower of rhetoric for the poet's lyric, a 
harmless, popular imagination for ignorant people 
who cannot discourse upon life, a dramatic truth 
to impress the weak to prepare their narrow minds 
for death. But no ; it is not that. God never 
uses sentiment. And if you think a moment, 
you will see that it is not the narrow mind which 
needs this truth, but his who discourses on life. 
The man who discourses most on life should dis- 
course the most on time. When you discourse 



"WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 197 

on life, you plead that it is in the interests of life. 
You despise the time view as unpractical in the 
interests of life — in the interests of the new life 
school who care too much for life to spend their 
strength upon the sentiment of time. Ah! but 
if you really cared for life, this sentiment would 
make you love it but the more. For time is the 
measurement of life. And all in life must be 
profoundly affected by its poor, scant quantity. 
Your life on earth is a great thing, a rich and 
precious possession. It is true that it is full of 
meaning and issues no man can reckon. But it 
is ten thousand times greater for the thought that 
it must cease. One of the chief reasons why life 
is so great is just that life is so short. If we had 
a thousand years of it, it would not be so great 
as if we had only a thousand hours. It is great 
because it is little. A man is to be executed, 
and the judge has given him a month to prepare 
for death. One short month. How rich every 
hour of it becomes, how precious the very 
moments are ! But suppose he has only five 
minutes. Then how unspeakably solemn ! How 
much greater is the five minutes life than the 
month life ! Make eternity a month and life five 
minutes — if such a tremendous exaggeration of 
life could be conceived. How much greater does 
it become for being so very small ! 

How precious time is to a short-lived man ! I 
am to die at thirty, you at sixty ; a minute is twice 
as dear to me, for each minute is twice as short. 



198 "WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 

So a day to me is more than a day to Methu- 
selah, for he had many days, and I but few. Oh ! 
if we really felt the dignity of life, we would won- 
der no less at its brevity than at its dignity. If 
we felt the greatness of life at this moment, how 
much keenness would this further thought add to 
it — that we might be dead before this sermon 
was done ! How many things we permit our- 
selves on the theory that life is great would be 
most emphatically wrong on the theory that time 
was also great! How many frivolous things — 
yes, how many great things, even — should we 
have to turn out this moment from our lives for 
just this thought, if we believed it, that time is 
short ! For there is no room among the crowded 
moments of our life for things which will not live 
when life and time are past. So no one who does 
not feel the keen sense of time flying away at 
every moment with the work he has done and the 
opportunities he has lost, can know the true great- 
ness of life and the inexpressible value of the self- 
selected things with which he fills its brief and 
narrow span. The thought of death must change 
at every point the values of the significant things 
of earth not less than the thought of life, and we 
must ever feel the solemn relations given to our 
life and work from the overwhelming thought 
that the working-life is brief. 

A modern poet has described, in strangely sug- 
gestive words, the time when first the idea of 
time and death began to dawn upon this earth. 



"WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 199 

The scene is laid in some Eastern land, where a 
great colony had risen from the offspring of Cain, 
the murderer of his brother. Cain knew what 
death was. He had seen it. But he alone, of 
all his scattered family, for he kept his burning 
secret to himself. Cain's family grew and spread 
throughout the land, but no thought of death 
came in to check the joyous wastry and exuber- 
ance of life ; till one day, in boyish pastime, a 
hurled stone strikes Lamech's son, and the lad 
falls to the earth. Friends gather round him as 
he lies, and bring him toys and playthings to 
wake him from his sleep. But no sleep like this 
had ever come to Lamech's son before, and soft 
entreating words bring no responsive sound to 
the cold lips, or light to the closed eyes. Then 
Cain comes forward, whispering, " The boy is 
dead," and tells the awe-struck family of this 
mystery of death. And then the poet describes 
the magic of this word, how " a new spirit, from 
that hour, came o'er the house of Cain." How 
time, once vague as air, began to stir strange 
terrors in the soul, and lend to life a moment 
which it had not known before. How even the 
sunshine had a different look. How " work 
grew eager, and device was born." How 

u It seemed the light was never loved before, 
Now each man said, ' 'T will go, and come no more.' 
No budding branch, no pebble from the brook, 
No form, no shadow, but new dearness took 
From the one thought that Life must have an end." 



200 "WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 

So the thought that life will be no more, that 
each day lived is hastening on the day when life 
itself must stop, makes every priceless hour of 
ours a million times more great, and tinges every 
thought, and word, and act with the shadow of 
what must be. 

From all this, it must now be clear that the 
man who is really concerned to live well must 
possess himself continually of the thought that he 
is not to live long. And that it is in the highest 
interests of great living to stimulate life, not to 
paralyse it, that God asks us all to-day, " What is 
your life? " 

But the Bible has done more than ask this 
question. It has answered it. And when the 
Bible answers a question, it gives always the best 
answer. We could do no better, therefore, than 
consult it a little further now, for it so happens 
that there are few subjects which the Bible goes 
into so thoroughly as this one — few thoughts 
which rise more often or more urgently to the 
surface of the great Bible lives than " What is 
your life?" 

And, besides, there is a peculiarity in the Bible 
answers which makes them particularly valuable, 
and which has tended, more than anything else, 
to impress them profoundly upon the deeper 
spirit of every age. And that peculiarity is this, 
that the answer is never given in hard, bare words, 
but is presented, wrapped up, as it were, in some 



"WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 201 

figure of such exquisite beauty, that no mind 
could refuse to give it a place, were it only for the 
fineness of its metaphor. Take, as an example, 
the answer which follows the question in the 
text, " What is your life ? " " It is even a vapour, 
that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth 
away." Who could afford to forget a thought 
like that, when once its beauty had struck root 
within the mind? And if God did not rather 
choose a few hard solid sentences of truth to per- 
petuate an answer to one of the most solid 
thoughts of life, is it not just because He wanted 
it to be remembered evermore — because He 
wanted the thought of the shortness and uncer- 
tainty of life to live in every living soul, and haunt 
the heart in times when other thoughts were 
passionless and dull? In childhood, before 
deeper thoughts had come, he would paint this 
truth, in delicate tints, on every opening soul; 
and in riper years, when trouble and sickness came 
and weaned the broken mind from sterner 
thoughts, he would have the soul still furnished 
with these ever-preaching pictures of the frailty 
of its life. 

Why is it that there is such strange attractive- 
ness to many hearts in the Bible thoughts of time, 
and why the peculiar charm with which the least 
religious minds will linger over the texts which 
speak of human life? It is because God has 
thrown an intensely living interest around these 
truths, by carrying His images of the thoughts 



202 "WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 

He most wanted remembered into the great 
galleries of the imagination, where the soul can 
never tire. Had such thoughts been left to 
reason, it would have stifled them with its cold 
touch ; had they been sunk in the heart, it would 
have consumed itself and them in hot and burn- 
ing passion ; but in the broad region of the im- 
agination there is expansiveness enough for even 
such vast truths to wander at their will, and power 
and mystery enough to draw both heart and 
reason after them in wondering, trembling hom- 
age. And if no day almost passes over our heads 
without some silent visitation to remind us what 
we are, it is because the Bible has utilised all the 
most common things of life to bring home these 
lessons to the soul, so that not a shadow on the 
wall, or blade of withered grass, is not full of 
meanings which every open heart can read. 

Now, it is a remarkable fact, in this connection, 
that the Bible has used up almost every physical 
image that is, in any way, appropriate to the case. 
And if we were to go over the conceptions of life 
which have been held by great men in succeed- 
ing ages of the world, we should find scarce 
anything new, scarce anything the Bible had not 
used before. 

There lie scattered throughout this Book no 
fewer than eighteen of these answers, and all in 
metaphor, to the question, " What is your life?" 
And any one who has not before gathered them 
together, cannot but be surprised at the singular 



"WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 203 

beauty and appropriateness of the collection. To 
begin with, let us run over their names. " What 
is your life f It is 

A tale that is told. A sleep. 

A pilgrimage. A vapour. 

A swift post. A shadow. 

A swift ship. A flower. 

A handbreadth. A weaver's shuttle. 

A shepherd's tent re- Water spilt on the 

moved. ground. 

A thread cut by the Grass. 

weaver. Wind. 

A dream. Nothing. 

Generally speaking, the first thing to strike one 
about these images is that they are all quick things 
— there is a suggestion of brevity and evanescence 
about them, and this feeling is so strong that we 
might fancy there was only one answer to the 
question, What is your life? namely, Your life is 
short But if we look closer at them for a mo- 
ment, shades of difference will begin to appear, 
and we shall find the hints of other meanings as 
great and striking, and quite as necessary to 
complete the conception of " your life." 

First of all, then, and most in detail, three of 
these metaphors give this answer: — (1) Your 
life is a very LITTLE thing. We have admitted 
that life is a very great thing. It is also a very 
little thing. Measure it by its bearing on eternity ; 
there is no image in God's universe to compare 



204 "WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 

with it for majesty and dignity. It is a sublime 
thing — Life. But measure it by its bearings 
upon time, by its results on the world, on other 
lives; there is no image too small to speak of its 
meanness and narrowness, for it is a little thing, 
" Your life." It is " a SHADOW," it is " a SHEP^ 
herd's tent removed," it is " a tale that is 
told." 

A Shadow. It is unreal ; it is illusory. It falls 
across the world without affecting it ; perhaps it 
only darkens it. Then it rises suddenly, and is 
gone. It leaves few impressions ; and if it could, 
shadow cannot act much on other shadows. So 
life at the best is a poor, resultless, shadowy thing. 

A Shepherd's Tent Removed. Just before sun- 
set the slopes of the Eastern hills would be 
dotted with Arab tents. And when night fell, 
the traveller in these lands, as he lay down to 
rest, would see the glimmering of their fires and 
hear the noisy bleating of their flocks. But in 
the morning, when he looked out, both herds and 
herdsmen would be gone. Hours ago, perhaps, 
the tents had been struck, and the hills would be 
silent and lonely as if no foot had ever stirred 
the dew on their slopes before. So man, the 
Bible says, traces out his trackless path through 
life. He is here to-day, in the noise of the 
world's labour; to-morrow, when you look for 
him, he is gone. Through the night sometime 
his frail tent has been struck, and his place is 
empty and still. His life has left no track to tell 



"WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 205 

that it was there — except a burnt-out fire to show 
that there a shepherd's tent had been removed. 

But the best of these images is the third — 
A tale that is told. Some think this means a 
thought or meditation. " Your life is a medita- 
tion," as the margin has it. But as the psalm in 
which the words occur was written by Moses, it 
is probable that the obvious meaning of the words 
is the correct one. In their journeyings the chil- 
dren of Israel would have many weary, unoccu- 
pied hours. There would be no books to relieve 
the monotony, and no doubt the people would 
attempt to beguile the tedious marches, and the 
long hours by the camp fires at night, with the 
familiar Oriental custom of narrating personal 
adventures in the form of stories or tales. Night 
after night, as this went on, the different tales of 
the story-tellers would begin to get mixed, then 
to confuse their audience, perhaps then even to 
weary them. The first tale, which made a great 
impression once, would lose its power, and the 
second, which was thought more wonderful still, 
would be distanced by the third. Then the third 
would be forgotten, and the fourth and the fifth ; 
till all would be forgotten, and last night's tale 
would be the vivid picture in every mind to-day. 
But the story-teller could know that to-night an- 
other would have his turn, and sit in the place of 
honour, and tell a more vivid tale than he told 
the night before, and his would be forgotten and 
ignored. 



206 "WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 

So we do spend our years as a tale that is told. 
The dead have told their tales; they have said 
their say. They thought we would remember 
what they did and said. But, no ; they are for- 
gotten. They have become old stories now. 
And our turn will come — our turn to stop ; 
our turn for the Angel of Death to close the 
chapter of our life, whether it be a novel or a 
psalm, and write the universal " Finis" at the 
end. What though a sentence here and there 
may linger for a few brief years to find a place 
— without quotation marks — in some tale better 
told, the tale itself must close and be forgotten, 
like the rest, an ill-told, ill-heard, and ill-remem- 
bered tale. 

There is, next, and briefly, another set of meta- 
phors which bring out the more common answer 
(which, therefore, it will only be necessary to 
name), that (2) Life is a short thing. Short- 
ness, of course, is different from littleness. A 
lightning flash is short, but not little. But life is 
both short and little. And there are two ways in 
which life is short: (1) Measured by growth. 
(2) Measured by minutes. Those who are grow- 
ing must feel time shortest. They have started 
with the wrecks of being to fashion themselves 
into men> and life is all too short to do it in. 
Therefore they work out their salvation with fear 
and trembling — fearful lest death should come, 
trembling lest life should stop before it was 
worked out. But they who measure life by its 



"WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 207 

minutes have nothing to say of its brevity ; for 
their purpose it is long enough. It is not more 
time they want, but " the more capacious soul," 
as some one says, " to flow through every pore 
of the little that they have." But there is no dis- 
tinction in the Bible treatment of the two. Time 
is the same to all. It is a handbreadth ; a weav- 
er's shuttle; nothing; "an eagle hasting to the 
prey"; a swift post ; a swift ship. David used 
to pray to God to give him a measure for his 
days. Well, he got it. It was the breadth of his 
hand. We carry about with us continually the 
measure of our days. " My days are as an 
handbreadth." 

The others are familiar symbols enough. The 
weaver's shuttle — is it the monotony, the same- 
ness, the constant repetition of life? Rather 
the quickness, the rapid flight through the thin 
web of time; the shuttle being then, perhaps, 
the quickest image men had. 

Then those in the country in early times could 
know nothing more rapid or sudden than the 
swoop of an eagle on its prey; then, by the sea- 
side, nothing more fleet than the swift sailing 
away of a ship driven by the unseen wind, or the 
hasty arrival of the " swift post " or messenger 
with tidings from afar. And it was not for want 
of opportunity if they did not learn their lessons 
well in these more simple days, when the few 
changes life had were each thus stamped with 
the thought of the great change into eternity. 



208 "WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 

The next thought is so closely allied to this 
that one can scarcely separate it but for conven- 
ience. It suggests the idea of transitoriness. 
Your life is a transitory thing. It is a thing of 
change. There is no endurance in it, no set- 
tling down in it, no real home to it here. There- 
fore God calls it a pilgrimage — a passing on to 
a something that is to be. Still closely allied 
to this, too, is the simile of the text — that life 
is a vapour. It means there is no real substance 
in it. It is a going and coming for a moment, 
then a passing away for ever. And then there 
are two or three metaphors which advance this 
idea still further. In their hands life passes 
from transitoriness into mystery. This life of 
ours, they show us, is a mysterious thing. And 
it is true life is a mysterious thing. We do not 
understand life — why it should begin, why it 
should end. There is some meaning in it some- 
where that has baffled every search; some mean- 
ing beyond, some more real state than itself. 
So the Bible calls it a sleep, a dream, the wind. 
No book but the Bible could have called our life 
a sleep. The great book of the Greeks has called 
death a sleep : — 

" Death's twin-brother, Sleep." 

But the Bible has the profounder thought. 
Life is the sleep. Death is but the waking. 
And the great poets and philosophers of the 
world since have found no deeper thought of 



"WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 209 

life than this; and the greatest of them all has 
used the very word our little life is "rounded 
with a sleep." It seems to have been a sooth- 
ing thought to them, and it may be a sanctifying 
thought to us that this life is not the end ; and 
therefore it is a wise thing to turn round some- 
times in our sleep, and think how there is more 
beyond than dreams. 

There are but two thoughts more to bring our 
questions to a close, and they will add a practical 
interest to what has gone before. 

What is your life ? 

1. Life is an irrevocable thing. We have just 
finished an irrevocable year. As we look back 
upon it, every thought and word and act of it is 
there in its place just as we left it. There are 
all the Sabbaths in their places, and all the well- 
spent days or ill-spent days between. There is 
every sin and every wish and every look still in 
its own exact surroundings, each under its own 
day of the month, at the precise moment of the 
day it happened. We are leaving it all at twelve 
o'clock to-night; but, remember, we leave it 
exactly as it stands. No single hour of it can 
be changed now, no smallest wish can be re- 
called, no angry word taken back. It is fixed, 
steadfast, irrevocable — stereotyped for ever on 
the past plates of eternity. Our book has a 
wonderful metaphor for this — "water spilt upon 
the ground, which cannot be gathered up again." 
No, we cannot gather up these days and put 
14 



210 "WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 

them back into Time's breaking urn, and live 
them over again. They are spilt upon the 
ground, and the great stream of Time has sucked 
them up, and cast them already on the eternal 
shores among all bygone years, and there they 
bide till God's time comes, and they come back, 
one by one, in order as they went, to meet us 
again and Him before the Judgment Bar. To- 
morrow is to be a time of resolution, is it? 
Well, let this resolution take the foremost place 
of all, that, when this day of next year comes, 
and we look once more at the irrevocable past, 
there shall be fewer things to wish undone, or 
words to wish unsaid, and more spots where 
memory shall love to linger still, more steps 
which, when retraced in thought, will fill the 
heart with praise. 

Lastly, life is more than an irrevocable thing. 
It is an uncertain thing — so certainly uncertain, 
that it is certain we shall not all be here to see 
this next year close. What means the grim 
image in the Bible of the weaver's thread sus- 
pended in the air, and the blade of the lifted 
knife just touching it with its edge? It means 
that you must die. The thread of your life is to 
be cut. The knife may be lifted now, the keen 
blade just touching it; one pressure of the hand, 
and it is done. One half, left unfinished, still 
hanging to the past — the other, dropped noise- 
lessly into eternity. Oh, life is an abruptly clos- 
ing thing! Is it not as grass? In the morning, 



"WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?" 211 

it groweth up and flourisheth; in the evening, 
it is cut down and withereth. Is your life ready 
for the swiftly falling knife, for the Reaper who 
stands at your door? Have you heard that there 
is another life — a life which cannot die, a life 
which, linked to your life, will make the past 
still bright with pardon and the future rich with 
hope ? This life is in His Son. 



NUMBER X 

Marvel Not 

"Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be bom 
again" — John iii. 7. 

EVERY man comes into the world wrapped 
in an atmosphere of wonder — an atmos- 
phere from which his whole after-life is a pro- 
longed effort to escape. The moment he opens 
his eyes this sense of wonder is upon him, and 
it never leaves him till he closes them on the 
greatest wonder — Death. Between these won- 
ders — the first awaking and the last sleep — 
his life is spent — itself a long-drawn breath of 
mystery. 

This sense of wonder is not an evil thing, 
although it is a thing to escape from. It is one 
of God's earliest gifts, and one of God's best 
gifts; but its usefulness to childhood or to man- 
hood depends on the mind escaping from wonder 
into something else — on its passing out from 
wonder into knowledge. Hence God has made 
the desire to escape as natural to us as the desire 
to wonder. 

Every one has been struck with the wonder- 
ment of a little child; but its desire to escape 



MARVEL NOT 213 

out of wonderment is a more marvellous thing. 
Its wonder becomes to it a constant and secret 
craving for an entrance into the rest of informa- 
tion and fact. Its eager questionings, its impa- 
tience of its own ignorance, its insatiable requests 
for knowledge, these are alike the symptoms of 
its wonder and the evidences of its efforts to 
escape. And although, in adult life, the devel- 
oped man is too cautious or too proud to display 
his wonder like the child, it is there in its thin 
disguise as inquiry, or investigation, or doubt. 
And there is no more exuberant moment in a 
man's life than when this wonder works until it 
passes into truth, when reason flashes a sudden 
light into a groping mind, and knowledge whis- 
pers, " Marvel not ! " 

Of all the subjects which men have found it 
convenient to banish into these regions of the 
unknowable, none suffer so frequently as this of 
the being born again. The elements of mys- 
tery which are supposed to cluster about it are 
reckoned an ample excuse for even the most 
intelligent minds not trying to understand it, and 
more than a justification of any one who makes 
the attempt and fails. 

The famous Rabbi, indeed, who was honoured 
with all this immortal discourse on regeneration 
is a case in point. He was just on the verge 
of losing himself in this most treasonable de- 
spair. Never was man more puzzled than Nico- 
demus at the initial statement of this truth. 



214 MARVEL NOT 

Never was man's sense of wonder more pro- 
foundly excited, never more in danger of losing 
itself in the mazes of mystery, never nearer 
taking the easy escape by drowning itself in 
ignorance than when Jesus rallied the escaping 
faculties of the Jewish ruler by the message, 
" Marvel not!' The background working of that 
mind during its strange night interview with 
Christ is full of interest and lesson, and what 
we do know is full of suggestion and meaning. 
Twice already during the conversation had the 
great Teacher said in substance, " Ye must be 
born again." And one of the strongest intellects 
of its time stood literally petrified before the 
words. Nicodemus first tries to summon cour- 
age and frame a wondering question in reply: 
" How can a man be born when he is old ? " 
and less a question, perhaps, than a soliloquy 
of his own. He has heard the great Teacher's 
statement, and he thinks upon it aloud, turning 
it over in his calm Hebrew mind till his very 
question returns upon himself and plunges him 
in deeper wonderment than before: " How can 
a man be born again when he is old ? " 

Next time he will venture no remark, and the 
Teacher's words fall uninterrupted on the puzzled 
scholar's ear : " Except a man be born again, 
he cannot see the kingdom of God." He has 
given him the key to it. But Nicodemus sees 
it not. He seems to have plunged into a 
dream. His reverie has deepened till he stands 



MARVEL NOT 215 

absorbed in thought, with down-turned eyes, 
before his Master. Jesus stands by in silence 
and reads the wonder and perplexity in the 
gathering blackness of his brow. Nicodemus is 
despairing, perhaps. He is going to give it 
up. He is utterly baffled with the strange turn 
the conversation has taken. There is no satis- 
faction to be got from this clandestine meeting 
after all, and puzzled, and beaten, and crest- 
fallen, he prepares to take his leave. But Jesus 
will not let the Divine sense of wonder be aroused 
to end like this. It must end in knowledge, not 
in ignominy. It must escape into spiritual truth, 
not into intellectual mystery. So He says, 
" Wonder not ; Marvel not. There is nothing 
so very mysterious that I cannot make you 
know. You will understand it all if you come 
and think of it. Ye need not marvel that I said 
unto thee, ' Ye must be born again/ " 

Thus Jesus saved Nicodemus from relapsing 
into ignorance of the greatest truth the world had 
known till then, or lulling his wonder to sleep for 
ever in mystery or despair. 

Now for the sake of those of us who have 
been tempted to pause — where Nicodemus so 
nearly lost himself — on the threshold of this 
truth : for the sake of those of us who have almost 
felt drawn into the intellectual sin of drowning 
our wonder at this truth in despair of it, let us ask 
ourselves very shortly why Christ said, " Marvel 
not." And it may be convenient in following up 



216 MARVEL NOT 

the subject from this side in a few words to di- 
vide the answer into three short heads. 

I. " Marvel not " — as if it were unintelligible. 

II. " Marvel not" — as if it were impossible. 

III. " Marvel not" — as if it were unnecessary. 
To begin with the first of these : — 

I. " Marvel not " — as if it were unintelligible. 
There is nothing more unintelligible in the world 
than the how a soul is born again. There is 
nothing more intelligible than that it is. We 
can understand the fact, however, without neces- 
sarily understanding the act. The act of being 
born again is as mysterious as God. All the 
complaints which have been showered upon this 
doctrine have referred to the act — the act with 
which we have really nothing to do, which is a 
process of God, the agency, the unseen wind of 
the Spirit, and which Jesus Himself has expressly 
warned us not to expect to understand. " Thou 
canst not tell," He said, " whence it cometh or 
whither it goeth." 

But there is nothing to frighten search in this. 
For precisely the same kind of mystery hangs 
over every process of nature and life. We do 
not understand the influence of sunshine on the 
leaves of a flower at this spring-time any more 
than we do the mysterious budding of spiritual 
life within the soul. Botany is a science for all 
that. 

We do not give up the study of chemistry 
as hopeless because we fail to comprehend the 



MARVEL NOT 217 

unseen laws which guide the delicate actions and 
reactions of matter. Nor do we disbelieve in the 
influence of food on the vital frame because no 
man has found the point exactly at which it 
passes from dead nourishment into life. We do 
not avoid the subject of electricity because elec- 
tricity is a mystery, or heat because we cannot 
see heat, or meteorology because we cannot see 
the wind. Marvel not then, from the analogy of 
physical nature, if, concerning this spirit of re- 
generation, we cannot tell whence it cometh and 
whither it goeth. It is not on that account unin- 
telligible that a man should be born again. 

If we care again to take the analogy from the 
moral and intellectual nature, the same may be 
said with even greater emphasis. 

The essence of regeneration is a change from 
one state to another — from an old life to a new 
one. Spiritually, its manifestation is in hating 
things once loved, or loving things once hated. 
God is no longer avoided, but worshipped ; Christ 
no longer despised, but trusted. 

Now, intellectually, changes at least in some 
way similar are happening every day. You rose 
up yesterday, bitterly opposed, let us say, to such 
and such a scheme. You were so strong in your 
opinion that nothing would ever shake you. You 
would never change, you said — could not. But 
you met a friend, who began to talk with you 
about it. You listened, then wavered, then capitu- 
lated. You allowed yourself to be talked round, 



218 MARVEL NOT 

as you expressed it. You were converted to the 
other side. And in the evening your change of 
mind was so complete that you were literally born 
again — you were literally another man ; you were 
in a new world of ideas, of interests, of hopes, with 
all the old dislikes in that special connection re- 
versed, and the old loves turned into hates. 

Something like this goes on, only with a higher 
agency, in the regeneration of the soul. Hence it 
is called by similar names a change of heart, or a 
turning round or a conversion to the other side. 
And just as talking round will change a man's 
opinion or convert him intellectually, so turning 
round by the Spirit of God will change his heart 
or convert him spiritually. When you are told, 
therefore, that your heart may be changed by the 
Spirit, even as your mind was changed by your 
friend, marvel not, as if it were unintelligible, that 
ye may be born again. What a few hours' con- 
versation could do in making you love the side 
you hated, and hate the side you loved. Marvel 
not at what more the power of God could do in 
turning round your being from the old love to the 
new. And one might even press the analogy a 
little further, and add, if a few minutes' conversa- 
tion with a fellow-man overturned the stubborn 
mountain of your mind, how much more should 
a few minutes' conversation with Christ, such as 
Nicodemus had, and which overthrew his strong- 
est Messianic views, and changed the current of 
his life for ever from that hour, how much more 



MARVEL NOT 219 

should it change yours the moment it touched 
His? But more than that. To Nicodemus, in- 
deed, even the conception itself of being born 
again should have seemed no mystery. It was 
already a familiar thought in another sense to 
every Jewish heart — nothing more nor less, in- 
deed, than one of the common political phrases 
of the day. The custom with a foreigner who 
came to reside in a Jewish town in these times 
was to regard him as unclean. He was held at 
arms' length; he was a man of different caste, 
the Jew had no dealings with the Samaritan. But 
if he wished to leave his gods and share the re- 
ligious hopes and civil privileges of the Jews, 
there was one way out of the old state into the 
new — just one way — he must be born again. 
He was baptised with water, and passed through 
certain other rights, till finally reckoned clean, 
when he became as truly one of the chosen peo- 
ple as if he had been the lineal son of Abraham. 
And the process of initiation from the Gentile 
world into the kingdom of the Jew was called a 
regeneration, or a being born again. There was 
nothing, therefore, in the thoughtful considera- 
tion of the new birth — in the higher sense — for 
the Jew to marvel at. " Art thou a master in 
Israel," Jesus might well ask, " and understandest 
not these things?" A Master in Israel stum- 
bling at an every-day illustration, marvelling as if 
it were unintelligible ! " Marvel not that I said 
unto thee, Ye must be born again." What the 



220 MARVEL NOT 

Jews did to a stranger in admitting him to their 
kingdom corresponds exactly with what we do in 
our process of naturalisation. 

Naturalisation — spiritualisation if we would 
be exactly accurate — is the idea, then, expressed 
in the " Born again " of Christ : and when we 
trace the expression back to its setting in Jewish 
politics, it yields the beautiful conception that 
God calls man — the foreigner, the stranger, the 
wanderer — to forsake the far country, and hav- 
ing been purified by initiatory rites from all un- 
cleanness, to be translated into the kingdom of 
His dear Son. And though there may be, in- 
deed, reasons why we should be so slow to under- 
stand it, and regions of rightful wonder in the 
deeper workings of the thought which we have 
not yet explored, there is at least this much clear, 
that we need not marvel as if it were unintelligible. 

II. In a word or two, marvel not, as if it were 
impossible. There is a name for God which men, 
in these days, have many temptations to forget 

— God the Creator of heaven and earth. It was 
the name, perhaps, by which we first knew God 

— God had made our earth, our house; God 
had made us. He was our Creator — God. We 
thought God could make anything then, or do 
anything, or do everything. But we lost our 
happy, early childhood's faith ; and now we won- 
der what things God can do, as if there were 
many things He could not. 

But there is one thing we have little difficulty 



MARVEL NOT 221 

in always referring to the creating hand of God — 
life. No one has ever made life but God. We 
call Him the author of life, and the author of life 
is a wondrously fertile author. He makes much 
life — life in vast abundance. There is nothing so 
striking in nature as the prodigality — the almost 
reckless prodigality — of life. It seems as if God 
delighted Himself in life. So the world is filled 
with it. In the woods, in the air, in the ocean- 
bed, everywhere teeming life, superabundance of 
life, which God has made. 

Well, if God can give life, He can surely add 
life. Regeneration is nothing in principle but 
the adding of more life. It is God adding life to 
life — more life to a man who has some life. 
The man has life which God gave him once ; but 
part of him — the best part of him — is dead. 
His soul is dead in trespasses and sins. God 
touches this, and it lives. Even as the body was 
dead and God breathed upon it till it lived, so 
God will breathe upon the soul, and more life, 
and better life, will come. 

So there is nothing impossible in being born 
again, any more than there is the impossible in 
being born at all. What did Jesus Christ come 
into the world for? To give life, He said; even 
more abundant life. And Christ giving life, that 
is regeneration. It was not more knowledge 
Nicodemus wanted, though he thought so, but 
more life ; and the best proof that life was pos- 
sible was that life was granted. So the best 



222 MARVEL NOT 

proof of Christianity is a Christian; the best 
proof of regeneration is a man who has been 
regenerated. Can a man be born again when 
he is old ? Certainly. For it has been done. 
Think of Bunyan the sinner and Bunyan the 
saint; think of Newton the miscreant and 
Newton the missionary; think of Paul the per- 
secutor and Paul the apostle ; and marvel not y as 
if it were impossible that a man should be born 
again. 

III. Marvel not — as if it were unnecessary. 
Regeneration is more than intelligible and pos- 
sible — it is necessary to enter the kingdom of 
God. " Except a man be born again, he cannot 
see the kingdom of God." Pie says it is neces- 
sary. A man cannot see the kingdom of God 
except he be born again. He cannot only not 
enter it; Jesus says he cannot see it. It is 
actually invisible to him. This is wh)' the world 
says of religion, " We do not understand it ; we 
do not make it out ; we do not see it" No, of 
course they do not see it; they cannot see it; 
first, it is necessary to be born again. 

When men come into the world, they are born 
outside of the kingdom of God, and they cannot 
see into it. They may go round and round it, 
and examine it from the outside, and pass an 
opinion on it. But they are no judges. They 
are not seeing what they are speaking about. 
For that which is born of spirit is spirit, that 
which is born of flesh is flesh ; and they can only 



MARVEL NOT 223 

give a criticism which is material on a thing 
which is spiritual. Therefore the critical value 
of a worldly man's opinion on religious matters 
is nothing. He is open to an objection which 
makes his opinion simply ludicrous — he is talk- 
ing about a thing which he has never seen. So 
far as one's experience of religion goes, regen- 
eration makes all the difference. It is as if some 
one had been standing outside some great ca- 
thedral. He has heard that its windows are 
of stained glass and exceeding beautiful. He 
walks all round it and sees nothing but dull, 
unmeaning spaces — an iron grating over each, 
to intensify the gloom that seems to reign within. 
There is nothing worth seeing there, but every- 
thing to repel. But let him go in. Let him see 
things from the inside. And his eye is dazzled 
with the gorgeous play of colours ; and the mir- 
acles and the parables are glowing upon the 
glass ; and the figure of Jesus is there, and the 
story of His love is told on every pane : and 
there are choirs of angels, and cherubim and 
seraphim, and an altar where, in light which is 
inaccessible, is God. 

So let a man enter into the kingdom of heaven 
■ — let a man be born again and enter — and he 
will SEE the kingdom of God. He will see the 
miracles and the parables which were meaning- 
less, colourless once; he will see the story of the 
Cross, which was a weariness and an offence ; he 
will see the person of Christ and the King in His 



224 MARVEL NOT 

beauty, and beholding as in a glass the glory of 
the only begotten, shall be changed into the same 
image from glory to glory. Marvel not if it is 
necessary, to see all this, that he must be born 
again. 

Within this great world there are a number of 
little worlds, to which entrance is only attainable 
by birth. There is the intellectual world, for in- 
stance, which requires the birth of brains; and 
the artistic world, which requires the birth of 
taste ; and the dramatic world, which requires the 
birth of talent ; and the musical world, which 
requires the gift of harmony and ear. A man 
cannot enter the intellectual world except he have 
brains, or the artistic world except he have taste. 
And he cannot make or find brains or taste. 
They must be born in him. A man cannot make 
a poetical mind for himself. It must be created 
in him. Hence " the poet is born — not made" 
we say. So the Christian is born, not made. 

There remains one other and imperative pro- 
test against regeneration being unnecessary. 
Human nature demands regeneration as if it 
were necessary. 

No man who knows the human heart or human 
history will marvel as if it were unnecessary that 
the world must be born again. Every other con- 
ceivable measure has been tried to reform it. 
Government has tried it, Philosophy has tried it, 
Philanthropy has tried it, and failed. The heart 
— the national heart or the individual heart — 



MARVEL NOT 225 

remains deceitful above all things and desperately- 
wicked. Reformation has been of little use to it; 
for every reformation is but a fresh and unguar- 
anteed attempt to do what never has been done. 
Reconstruction has been of little use to it; for re- 
construction is an ill-advised endeavour to rebuild 
a house which has fallen a thousand times already 
with the same old bricks and beams. Man has had 
every chance from the creation to the present 
moment to prove that regeneration was not the 
one necessity of the world — and, again, utterly 
failed. 

We are still told, indeed, that all the world 
needs is just to get a start. Once set a man on 
his feet, or a universe, with a few good guiding 
principles. Give human nature fair play, and it 
must win in the end. But no. The experiment 
has been tried. God tried it Himself. It was 
fairly done, and it failed. The wickedness of 
man had waxed great throughout the land. So 
God said He would destroy all living flesh, and 
select a picked few of the best inhabitants to 
start the world afresh. A fair experiment. So 
all the world was drowned except a little nucleus 
in an ark — the picked few who were to found 
Utopia, who were to reconstruct the universe, who 
were to begin human life again, and make every- 
thing so much better than it was before. But 
the experiment failed. The picked few failed. 
Their children failed. Their children's children 
failed. Things got no better; only worse, per- 



226 MARVEL NOT 

haps, and worse ; and no man ever really knew 
the cause till Jesus told the world that it must — 
that it was essentially necessary — that it must, 
absolutely and imperatively must, be born again. 

If human nature makes it necessary, much 
more does the Divine nature. When Christ shall 
present His Church to God, it must be as a Spot- 
less Bride. In that eternal kingdom saints are 
more than subjects : they are the companions of 
the King. They must be a very select number. 
They must be a very high-born company. Mar- 
vel not if you and I are to be there — as if it were 
unnecessary that we must be born again. " Lord, 
who shall abide in Thy tabernacle — who shall 
dwell in Thy holy hill? He that hath clean 
hands and a pure heart." There shall in no wise 
enter into it anything that defileth. Marvel not 
as if it were unnecessary that our robes should be 
washed in white. 

Marvel not as if it were unintelligible. 

Marvel not as if it were impossible. 

Marvel not as if it were unnecessary that ye 
must be born again. Marvel if you are. Marvel 
if you are. 



NUMBER XI 

The Man after God's 
Own Heart 

A BIBLE STUDY ON THE 
IDEAL OF A CHRISTIAN LIFE 

" A man after mine own heart, who shall fulfil all My 
will" — Acts xiii. 22. 

NO man can be making much of his life who 
has not a very definite conception of what 
he is living for. And if you ask, at random, a 
dozen men what is the end of their life, you will be 
surprised to find how few have formed to them- 
selves more than the most dim idea. The ques- 
tion of the summum bonutn has ever been the most 
difficult for the human mind to grasp. What 
shall a man do with his life? What is life for? 
and Why is it given? This has been the one 
great puzzle for human books and human 
thoughts ; and ancient philosophy and mediaeval 
learning and modern culture alike have failed to 
tell us what these mean. 

No man, no book save one, has ever told the 
world what it wants, so each has had to face the 
problem in his own uncertain light, and carry out, 
each for himself, the life that he thinks best. 



228 MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 

Here is one who says literature is the great 
thing — he will be a literary man. He lays down 
for himself his ideal of a literary life. He sur- 
rounds himself with the best ideals of style ; and 
with his great ambition working towards great 
ends, after great models, he cuts out for himself 
what he thinks is his great life-work. Another 
says the world is the great thing — he will be a 
man of the world. A third will be a business 
man; a fourth, a man of science. 

And the Christian must have a definite aim and 
model for his life. These aims are great aims, 
but not great enough for him. His one book has 
taught him a nobler life than all the libraries of 
the rich and immortal past. He may wish to be 
a man of business, or a man of science, and indeed 
he may be both. But he covets a nobler name 
than that. He will be the man after God's own 
heart. He has found out the secret philosophy 
never knew, that the ideal life is this — " A man 
after mine own heart, who shall fulfil all My 
will." And just as the man of the world, or the 
literary man, lays down a programme for the 
brief span of his working life, which he feels 
must vanish shortly in the unknown of the 
grave, much more will the Christian for the great 
span of his life before it arches over the valley 
into eternity. 

He is a great man who has a great plan to his 
life — the greatest who has the greatest plan and 
keeps it. And the Christian should have the 



MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 229 

greatest plan as his life is the greatest, as his 
work is the greatest, as his life and his work will 
follow him when all this world's is done. 

Now we are going to ask to-day, What is the 
true plan of the ideal Christian life? We shall 
need a definition that we may know it, a descrip- 
tion that we may follow it. And if you look, 
you will see that both, in a sense, lie on the sur- 
face of our text. " A man after mine own heart, " 
— here is the definition of what we are to be. 
"Who shall fulfil all My will,"— here is the 
description of how we are to be it. These words 
are the definition and the description of the 
model human life. They describe the man after 
God's own heart. They give us the key to the 
Ideal Life. 

The general truth of these words is simply 
this: that the end of life is to do God's will. 
Now that is a great and surprising revelation. 
No man ever found that out. It has been before 
the world these eighteen hundred years, yet few 
have even found it out to-day. One man will 
tell you the end of life is to be true. Another 
will tell you it is to deny self. Another will 
say it is to keep the Ten Commandments. A 
fourth will point you to the Beatitudes. One 
will tell you it is to do good, another that it is 
to get good, another that it is to be good. But 
the end of life is in none of these things. It is 
more than all, and it includes them all. The 
end of life is not to deny self, nor to be true, 



230 MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 

nor to keep the Ten Commandments — simply 
to do God's will. It is not to get good nor be 
good, nor even to do good — just what God wills, 
whether that be working or waiting, or winning 
or losing, or suffering or recovering, or living or 
dying. 

But this conception is too great for us. It is 
not practical enough. It is the greatest con- 
ception of man that has ever been given to the 
world. The great philosophers, from Socrates 
and Plato to Immanuel Kant and Mill, have 
given us their conception of an ideal human 
life. But none of them is at all so great as 
this. Each of them has constructed an ideal 
human life, a universal life they call it, a life 
for all other lives, a life for all men and all 
time to copy. None of them is half so deep, so 
wonderful, so far-reaching, as this: "A man 
after mine own heart, who shall fulfil all My 
will." 

But exactly for this very reason it is at first 
sight impracticable. We feel helpless beside a 
truth so great and eternal. God must teach us 
these things. Like little children, we must sit 
at His feet and learn. And as we come to Him 
with our difficulty, we find He has prepared two 
practical helps for us, that He may humanise 
it and bring it near to us, so that by studying 
these helps, and following them with willing 
and humble hearts, we shall learn to copy into 
our lives the great ideal of God. 



MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 231 

The two helps which God has given us are 
these : 

I. The Model Life realised in Christ, the 
living Word. 

IT. The Model Life analysed in the Bible, 
the written Word. 

The usual method is to deal almost exclu- 
sively with the first of these. To-day, for cer- 
tain reasons, we mean to consider the second. 
As regards the first, of course, if a man could 
follow Christ he would lead the model life. But 
what is meant by telling a man to follow Christ? 
How is it to be done ? It is like putting a young 
artist before a Murillo or a Raphael, and telling 
him to copy it. But even as the artist in fol- 
lowing his ideal has colours put into his hand, 
and brush and canvas, and a hint here from this 
master, and a touch there from another, so with 
the pupil in the school of Christ. The great 
Master Himself is thereto help him. The Holy 
Spirit is there to help him. But the model life 
is not to be mystically attained. There is spir- 
ituality about it, but no unreality. So God has 
provided another great help, our second help: 
The Model Life analysed in the Word of God. 
Without the one the ideal life would be incred- 
ible; without the other it would be unintel- 
ligible. Hence God has given us two sides 
of this model life: (1) Realised in the Living 
Word; (2) Analysed in the written Word. 

Let us search our Bibles then to find this ideal 



232 MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 

life, so that copying it in our lives, reproducing 
it day by day and point by point, we may learn 
to make the most of our little life, and have it 
said of us, as it was of David, "A man after 
mine own heart, who shall fulfil all My will." 

(i) The first thing our ideal man wants is a 
reason for his being alive at all. He must ac- 
count for his existence. What is he here for? 
And the Bible answer is this: "I come to do 
Thy will, O God " (Heb. x. 7). 

That is what we are here for — to do God's 
will. "I come to do Thy will, O God." That 
is the object of your life and mine — to do God's 
will. It is not to be happy or to be successful, 
or famous, or to do the best we can, and get 
on honestly in the world. It is something far 
higher than this — to do God's will. There, at 
the very outset, is the great key to life. Any 
one of us can tell in a moment whether our lives 
are right or not. Are we doing God's will? 
We do not mean, Are we doing God's work? — 
preaching or teaching, or collecting money — 
but God's will. A man may think he is doing 
God's work, when he is not even doing God's 
will. And a man may be doing God's work and 
God's will quite as much by hewing stones, or 
sweeping streets, as by preaching or praying. 
So the question just means this — Are we work- 
ing out our common every-day life on the great 
lines of God's will? This is different from the 
world's model life. "I come to push my way." 



MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 233 

This is the world's idea of it. Not my way — 
not my will, but Thine be done. This is the 
Christian's. This is what the man after God's 
own heart says : " I seek not mine own will, but 
the will of Him that sent Me." 

(2) The second thing the ideal man needs is 
Sustenance. After he has got life, you must 
give him food. Now, what food shall you give 
him ? Shall you feed him with knowledge, or 
with riches, or with honour, or with beauty, or 
with power, or truth? No; there is a rarer 
luxury than these — so rare, that few have ever 
more than tasted it ; so rich, that they who have 
will never live on other fare again. It is this : 
"My meat is to do the will of Him that sent 
Me " (John iv. 34). 

Again, to do God's will. That is what a man 
lives for: it is also what he lives on. Meat. 
Meat is strength, support, nourishment. The 
strength of the model life is drawn from the 
Divine will. Man has a strong will. But God's 
will is everlasting strength — Almighty strength. 
Such strength the ideal man gets. He grows by 
it, he assimilates it — it is his life. "Man shall 
not live by bread alone, but by every word that 
cometh out of God." Nothing can satisfy his 
appetite but this — -he hungers to do God's will. 
Nothing else will fill him. Every one knows 
that the world is hungry. But the hungry world 
is starving. It has many meats and many drinks, 
but there is no nourishment in them. It has 



234 MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 

pleasures, and gaiety, and excitement; but there 
is no food there for the immortal craving of the 
soul. It has the theatre and worldly society, 
and worldly books, and worldly lusts. But 
these things merely intoxicate. There is no 
sustenance in them. So our ideal life turns its 
eye from them all with unutterable loathing. 
"My meat is to do God's will." To do God's 
will! No possibility of starving on such won- 
derful fare as this. God's will is eternal. It 
is eternal food the Christian lives upon. In 
spring-time it is not sown, and in summer 
drought it cannot fail. In harvest it is not 
reaped, yet the storehouse is ever full. Oh, 
what possibilities of life it opens up! What 
possibilities of growth ! What possibilities of 
work! How a soul develops on God's will! 

(3) The next thing the ideal man needs is 
Society. Man is not made to be alone. He 
needs friendships. Without society, the ideal 
man would be a monster, a contradiction. You 
must give him friendship. Now, whom will you 
give him? Will you compliment him by call- 
ing upon the great men of the earth to come and 
minister to him ? No. The ideal man does not 
want compliments. He has better food. Will 
you invite the ministers and the elders of the 
Church to meet him? Will you offer him the 
companionship of saint or angel, or seraphim or 
cherubim, as he treads his path through the 
wilderness of life? No; for none of these will 



MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 235 

satisfy him. He has a better friendship than 
saint or angel, or seraphim or cherubim. The 
answer trembles on the lip of every one who is 
trying to follow the ideal life : " Whosoever shall 
do the will of My Father which is in Heaven, 
the same is My brother, and sister, and mother" 
(Matt. xii. 50; Mark iii. 35). 

Yes. My brother, and My sister and mother. 
Mother ! The path of life is dark and cheerless 
to you. There is a smoother path just by the 
side of it — a forbidden path. You have been 
tempted many a time to take it. But you knew 
it was wrong, and you paused. Then, with a 
sigh, you struck along the old weary path again. 
It was the will of God, you said. Brave mother! 
Oh, if you knew it, there was a voice at your ear 
just then, as Jesus saw the brave thing you had 
done, " My mother ! " " He that doeth the will 
of My Father, the same is My mother/' Yes; 
this is the consolation of Christ — "My mother." 
What society to be in ! What about the dark- 
ness of the path, if we have the brightness of 
His smile? Oh ! it is better, as the hymnist says, 

" It is better to walk in the dark with God, 
Than walk alone in the light ; 
It is better to walk with Him by faith, 
Than walk alone by sight." 

Some young man here is suffering fierce temp- 
tation. To-day he feels strong; but to-morrow 
his Sabbath resolutions will desert him. What 



236 MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 

will his companions say, if he does not join them ? 
He cannot face them if he is to play the Chris- 
tian. Companions ! What are all the compan- 
ions in the world to this? What are all the 
friendships, the truest and the best, to this dear 
and sacred brotherhood of Christ? " He that 
doeth the will of My Father, the same is My 
brother/' 

My mother, my brother, and my sister. He 
has a sister — some sister here. Sister! Your 
life is a quiet and even round of common and 
homely things. You dream, perhaps, of a wider 
sphere, and sigh for a great and useful life, like 
some women whose names you know. You ques- 
tion whether it is right that life should be such 
a little bundle of very little things. But nothing 
is little that is done for God, and it must be right 
if it be His will. And if this common life, with 
its homely things, is God's discipline for you, be 
assured that in your small corner, your unob- 
served, your unambitious, your simple woman's 
lot is very near and very dear to Him Who said, 
"Whosoever doeth the will of My Father, the 
same is My sister." 

Now we have found the ideal man a Friend. 
But he wants something more. 

(4) He wants Language, He must speak to 
his Friend. He cannot be silent in such com- 
pany. And speaking to such a Friend is not 
mere conversation. It has a higher name. It 
is communion. It is prayer. Well, we listen to 



MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 237 

hear the ideal man's prayer. Something about 
God's will it must be ; for that is what he is sure 
to talk about. That is the object of his life. 
That is his meat. In that he finds his society. 
So he will be sure to talk about it. Every one 
knows what his prayer will be. Every one re- 
members the words of the ideal prayer: " Thy 
will be Done" (Matt. vi. 10). 

Now mark his emphasis on done. He prays 
that God's will may be done. It is not that God's 
will may be borne, endured, put up with. There 
is activity in his prayer. It is not mere resigna- 
tion. How often is this prayer toned off with 
mere endurance, sufferance, passivity. " Thy will 
be done," people say resignedly. " There is no 
help for it. We had just as well submit. God 
evidently means to have His way. Better to 
give in at once and make the most of it." This 
is far from the ideal prayer. Well, it is a great 
thing to say this, but not in this spirit. It may 
be nobler to suffer God's will than to do it; 
perhaps it is. But there is nothing noble in 
resignation of this sort — this resignation under 
protest as it were. And it disguises the meaning 
of the prayer, "Thy will be done." It is in- 
tensely active. It is not an acquiescence simply 
in God's dealing. It is a cry for more of God's 
dealing. God's dealing with me, with every- 
thing, with everybody, with the whole world. 
It is an appeal to the mightiest energy in heaven 
or earth to work, to make more room for itself, 



238 MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 

to energise. ; It is a prayer that the Almighty 
energies of the Divine will may be universally 
known, and felt, and worshipped. 

The ideal man has no deeper prayer than 
this. It is the truest language of his heart. 
He does not want a bed of roses, or his pathway 
strewn with flowers. He wants to do God's will. 
He does not want health or wealth, nor does he 
covet sickness or poverty — just what God sends. 
He does not want success — even success in 
winning souls — or want of success. What God 
wills for him, that is all. He does not want to 
prosper in business, or to keep barely struggling 
on. God knows what is best. He does not 
want his friends to live, himself to live or die. 
God's will be done. The currents of his life 
are deeper than the circumstance of things. 
There is a deeper principle in it than to live 
to gratify himself. And so he simply asks, 
that in the ordinary round of his daily life there 
may be no desire of his heart more deep, more 
vivid, more absorbingly present than this, " Thy 
will be done." He who makes this the prayer 
of his life will know that of all prayer it is 
the most truly blessed, the most nearly in the 
spirit of Him who sought not His own will, 
but the will of Him that sent Him. 

" Lord Jesus, as Thou wilt ! if among thorns I go 
Still sometimes here and there let a few roses blow. 
No ! Thou on earth along the thorny path hath gone, 
Then lead me after Thee, my Lord ; Thy will be done." 

Schmolk. 



MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 239 

(5) But the ideal man does not always pray. 
There is such perfect blessedness in praying the 
ideal prayer that language fails him sometimes. 
The peace of God passes all understanding, much 
less all expression. It comes down upon the 
soul, and makes it ring with unutterable joy. And 
language stops. The ideal man can no longer 
pray to his Friend. So his prayer changes into 
Praise. He is too full to speak, so his heart 
bursts into song. Therefore we must find in the 
Bible the praise of his lips. And who does not 
remember in the Psalms the song of the ideal 
man? The huntsmen would gather at night to 
sing of their prowess in the chase, the shepherd 
would chant the story of the lion or the bear 
which he killed as he watched his flocks. But 
David takes down his harp and sings a sweeter 
psalm than all : " Thy Statutes have been my Songs 
in the House of my pilgrimage" (Ps. cxix. 54). 
He knows no sweeter strain. How different from 
those who think God's law is a stern, cold thing ! 
God's law is His written will. It has no terrors 
to the ideal man. He is not afraid to think of 
its sternness and majesty. " I will meditate on 
Thy laws day and night," he says. He tells us 
the subject of his thoughts. Ask him what he is 
thinking about at any time. " Thy laws," he says. 
How he can please his Master. What more he 
can bear for Him. What next he can do for 
Him. He has no other pleasure in life than this. 
You need not speak to him of the delights of life. 



240 MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 

" I will delight myself in Thy statutes," he says. 
You see what amusements the ideal man has. 
You see where the sources of his enjoyment are. 
Praise is the overflow of a full heart. When it is 
full of enjoyment it overflows; and you can tell 
the kind of enjoyment from the kind of praise 
that runs over. The ideal man's praise is of the 
will of God. He has no other sources of enjoy- 
ment. The cup of the world's pleasure has no 
attraction for him. The delights of life are bitter. 
Here is his only joy, his only delight (Ps. xl. 8). 
" I delight to do Thy will, O my God." 

(6) The next thing the ideal man wants is 
Education. He needs teaching. He must take 
his place with the other disciples at his Mas- 
ter's feet. What does he want from the great 
Teacher? Teach me Wisdom? No. Wisdom is 
not enough. Teach me what is Truth? No, 
not even that. Teach me how to do good, how 
to love, how to trust? No, there is a deeper want 
than all. " Teach me to do Thy Will" (Ps. cxliii. 
10). This is the true education. Teach me to 
do Thy Will. This was the education of Christ. 
Wisdom is a great study, and truth, and good 
works, and love, and trust, but there is an earlier 
lesson — obedience. So the ideal pupil prays, 
"Teach me to do Thy Will." 

And now we have almost gone far enough. 
These are really all the things the ideal man can 
need. But in case he should want anything else, 
God has given the man after his own heart a 



MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 241 

promise. God never leaves anything unprovided 
for. An emergency might arise in the ideal 
man's life ; or he might make a mistake or lose 
heart, or be afraid to ask his friend for some very 
great thing he needed, thinking it was too much, 
or for some very little thing, thinking it unworthy 
of notice. So God has given. 

(7) The ideal Promise, " If we ask anything ac- 
cording to His will, He heareth us . . . and we 
know that we have the petitions that we desired 
from Him " (1 John v. 14). If ye ask anything 
— no exception — no limit to God's confidence 
in him. He trusts him to ask right things. He is 
guiding him, even in what he asks, if he is the 
man after God's own heart; so God sets no limit 
to his power. If any one is doing God's will, let 
him ask anything. It is God's will that he ask 
anything. Let him put His promise to the test. 

Notice here what the true basis of prayer is. 
The prayer that is answered is the prayer after 
God's will. And the reason for this is plain. 
What is God's will is God's wish. And when a 
man does what God wills, he does what God 
wishes done. Therefore God will have that done 
at any cost, at any sacrifice. Thousands of 
prayers are never answered, simply because God 
does not wish them. If we pray for any one 
thing, or any number of things we are sure God 
wishes, we may be sure our wishes will be grati- 
fied. For our wishes are only the reflection of 

God's. And the wish in us is almost equivalent 
16 



242 MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 

to the answer. It is the answer casting its 
shadow backwards. Already the thing is done 
in the mind of God. It casts two shadows — one 
backward, one forward. The backward shadow 
— that is the wish before the thing is done, which 
sheds itself in prayer. The forward shadow — 
that is the joy after the thing is done, which 
sheds itself in praise. Oh, what a rich and won- 
derful life this ideal life must be ! Asking any- 
thing, getting everything, willing with God, pray- 
ing with God, praising with God. Surely it is 
too much, this last promise. How can God trust 
us with a power so deep and terrible? Ah, He 
can trust the ideal life with anything. " If he ask 
anything." Well, if he do, he will ask nothing 
amiss. It will be God's will if it is asked. It 
will be God's will if it is not asked. For he is 
come, this man, to do God's will. 

There is only one thing more which the model 
man may ever wish to have. We can imagine 
him wondering, as he thinks of the unspeakable 
beauty of this life — of its angelic purity, of its 
divine glory, of its Christ-like unselfishness, of 
its heavenly peace — how long this life shall last. 
It may seem too bright and beautiful, for all 
things fair have soon to come to an end. And if 
any cloud could cross the true Christian's sky, it 
would be when he thought that this ideal life 
might cease. But God, in the riches of His fore- 
thought, has rounded off this corner of his life 
with a great far-reaching text, which looks above 



MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 243 

the circumstance of him, and projects his life into 
the vast Eternity beyond. "He that doeth the 
will of God abideth for ever" (1 John ii. 17). 

May God grant that you and I may learn to 
live this great and holy life, remembering the 
solemn words of Him who lived it first, who only 
lived it all : " Not every one that saith unto me, 
Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of 
Heaven ; but he that doeth the will of My Father 
which is in Heaven." 



NUMBER XII 

Penitence 

"And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter . . . 
and Peter went out and wept bitterly" — Luke xxii. 61, 62. 

EVERY man at some time in his life has 
fallen. Many have fallen many times ; 
few, few times. And the more a man knows his 
life, and watches its critical flow from day to day, 
the larger seems to grow the number of these 
falls, and the oftener reaches out to God his 
penitential prayer, " Turn yet again, O Lord ! " 

We have all shuddered before this as we read 
the tale of Peter's guilt. Many a time we have 
watched the plot as it thickens round him, and 
felt the almost unconscious sympathy which 
betrayed itself. How like the story was to one 
that had sometimes happened with ourselves. 
And we knew, as we followed the dreary stages 
of his fall, that the same well-worn steps had 
been traced since then by every human foot. 
How Peter could have slept in the garden, when 
he should have watched and prayed, all men 
who have an inner history can understand. The 
faithlessness that made him follow Christ far off, 



PENITENCE 245 

instead of keeping at his Master's side, not the 
best of us will challenge. For we too know what 
it is sometimes to get out of step with Christ. 
We will be the last to stop and ask his business 
in that worldly company who warmed themselves 
by the fire. And none who know that the heart 
is deceitful above all things will wonder that this 
man who had lived so long in the inner circle of 
fellowship with Christ, whose eyes were familiar 
with miracles, who was one of that most select 
audience who witnessed the glory of the trans- 
figuration — that this man, when his ears were 
yet full of the most solemn words the world had 
ever heard, when his heart was warm still with 
Communion-table thoughts, should have turned 
his back upon his Lord, and, almost ere the 
sacramental wine was dry upon his lips, have 
cursed Him to His face. Such things, alas ! are 
not strange to those who know the parts in the 
appalling tragedy of sin. 

But there is a greater fact in Peter's life than 
Peter's sin — a much less known fact — Peter's 
penitence. All the world are at one with Peter 
in his sin ; but not all the world are with him in 
his penitence. Sinful Peter is one man, and 
Repentant Peter is another; and many who have 
kept his company along these worn steps to sin 
have left him to trace the tear-washed path of 
penitence alone. But the real lesson in Peter's 
life is the lesson in repentance. His fall is a 
lesson in sin which requires no teacher, but his 



246 PENITENCE 

repentance is a great lesson in salvation. And 
Peter's penitence is full of the deepest spiritual 
meaning to all who have ever made Peter's 
discovery — that they have sinned. 

The few words which form the pathetic sequel 
to the tale of Peter's sin may be defined as the 
" ideal progress of Christian penitence." They 
contain materials for the analysis of the most rare 
and difficult grace in spiritual experience. And 
lying underneath these two simple sentences are 
the secrets of some of the most valuable spiritual 
laws. We find here four outstanding characteris- 
tics of the state of penitence : 

(i) It is a divine thing. It began with God. 
Peter did not turn. But " The Lord turned and 
looked upon Peter." 

(2) It is a very sensitive thing. A look did it. 
The Lord . . . looked upon Peter. 

(3) It is a very intense thing. Peter went out 
and wept bitterly. 

(4) It is a very lonely thing. Peter went out — 
out into the quiet night, to be alone with his sin 
and God. 

These are characteristic not only of the peni- 
tential state, but of all God's operations on the 
soul. 

(1) To take the first of these, we find that the 
beginning of this strange experience came from 
God. It was not Peter who turned. The Lord 
turned and looked upon Peter. When the cock 
crew, that might have recalled him to himself; he 



PENITENCE 247 

was just in the very act of sin. And when a man 
is in the thick of his sin his last thought is to 
throw down his arms and repent. So Peter never 
thought of turning, but the Lord turned; and 
when Peter would rather have looked anywhere 
else than at the Lord, the Lord looked at Peter. 
And this scarce-noticed fact is a great sermon to 
every one who sins — that the Lord turns first. 

Now the result of this distinction is this : that 
there are two kinds of sorrow for sin. And these 
are different in their origin, in their religious value, 
and in their influence on our life. The com- 
moner kind is when a man does wrong, and, in 
the ordinary sense of the word, is sorry that he 
has done it. We are always easier in such a case 
when sorrow comes. It seems to provide a sort 
of guarantee that we are not disposed to do the 
same again, and that our better self is still alive 
enough to enter its protest against the sin the 
lower self has done. And we count this feeling 
of reproach which treads so closely on the act 
as a sort of compensation or atonement for the 
wrong. This is a kind of sorrow which is well 
known to all who examine themselves, and in any 
way struggle with sin. It is a kind of sorrow 
which is coveted by all who examine themselves ; 
which gives relief to what is called a penitential 
heart, and lends a fervour to many a penitential 
prayer. But it is a startling truth that there is no 
religion in such a state. There is no real peni- 
tence there. It may not contain even one ingre- 



248 PENITENCE 

dient of true repentance. It is all many know of 
repentance, and all many have for repentance. 
But it is no true sorrow for sin. It is wounded 
self-love. It is sorrow that we were weak enough 
to sin. We thought we had been stronger men 
and women, and when we were put to the test we 
found to our chagrin that we had failed. And this 
chagrin is what we are apt to mistake for peni- 
tence. But it is no Divine gift or grace, this peni- 
tence — it is merely wounded pride — sorrow 
that we did not do better, that we were not so good 
as ourselves and our neighbours thought. It is 
just as if Peter turned and looked upon Peter. 
And when Peter turns and looks upon Peter he 
sees what a poor, weak creature Peter is. And if 
God had not looked upon Peter he might have 
wept well-nigh as bitterly, not because he had 
sinned against his God, but because he, the great 
apostle, had done a weak thing — he was weak as 
other men. 

The fit of low spirits which comes to us when 
we find ourselves overtaken in a fault, though we 
flatter ourselves to reckon it a certain sign of 
penitence, and a set-off to the sin itself which God 
will surely take into account, is often nothing 
more than vexation and annoyance with our- 
selves, that, after all our good resolutions and 
attempts at reformation, we have broken down 
again. 

Contrast for a moment with such a penitence 
the publican's prayer of penitence in the temple. 



PENITENCE 249 

It was no chagrin nor wounded pride with him. 
And we feel as we read the story that the Lord 
must have turned and looked upon the publican, 
when he cried " God " — as if God were looking 
right down into the man's eyes — " God be 
merciful to me, a sinner ! " Stricken before his 
God, this publican had little thought of the self- 
respect he had lost, and felt it no indignity to 
take the culprit's place and be taught the true 
divinity of a culprit's penitence. 

Now it will be seen at once that the difference 
between the publican's penitence and the first- 
named sorrow is just the difference between the 
human and the Divine. The one is God turning 
and looking upon man, the other is man turning 
and looking upon himself. There is no wrong in 
a man turning and looking upon himself — only 
there is danger. There is the danger of misin- 
terpreting what he sees and what he feels. What 
he feels is the mortification, the self-reproach of 
the sculptor who has made an unlucky stroke of 
the chisel ; the chagrin of the artist who has spoilt 
the work of weeks by a clumsy touch. Apart 
altogether from religion we must feel mortified 
when we do wrong. Life, surely, is a work of 
art; character-building, soul-culture, is the highest 
kind of art; and it would be strange indeed if 
failure passed unresented by the mind. 

But what is complained of is not that it passes 
unresented by the mind, but that it passes unre- 
sented by the soul. Penitence of some sort there 



250 PENITENCE 

must be, but in the one case it is spiritual, in the 
other purely artistic. And the danger is the more 
subtle because the higher the character is, the 
more there must necessarily be of the purely 
artistic penitence. 

The effect is, that self gets in to what ought to 
be the most genuine experience of life, makes 
the most perfect imitation of it, and transforms 
the greatest opportunities for recovery into the 
basest ministry to pride. The true experience, 
on the other hand, is a touching lesson in human 
helplessness ; teaching him God has to come to 
man's relief at every turn of his life, and how the 
same hand which provides his pardon has actually 
to draw him to the place of penitence. 

It is God looking into the sinner's face that 
has introduced a Christian element into human 
sorrow. And Paul, in making the Christian 
vocabulary, had to coin a word which was strange 
to all the philosophies of the world then, and is 
so still, when he joined the conceptions of God 
and Sorrow into one, and told us of the Godly- 
sorrow which had the marvellous virtue of work- 
ing repentance not to be repented of. And it is 
this new and sacred sorrow which comes to sinful 
men as often as the Lord turns and looks upon 
their life; it is this which adds the penitential 
incense of true penitence to the sacrifice of a 
broken and contrite heart. That was a great dis- 
tinction which Luke brings out, in the prodigal's 
life, between coming to himself and coming to his 



PENITENCE 251 

father. " He came to himself," and then, says 
Luke, " he came to his father." So we are always 
coming to ourselves. We are always finding 
out, like the prodigal, the miserable bargains we 
have made. But it is only when we come to our 
Father that we can get them undone and the real 
debt discharged. 

(2) But now, secondly, we come to the sensi- 
tiveness of penitence. Or rather, perhaps, we 
should talk of the sensitiveness of the penitent 
human soul. The Lord turned and looked upon 
Peter. There is nothing more sensitive in all the 
world than a human soul which has once been 
quickened into its delicate life by the touch of the 
divine. Men seldom estimate aright the exquisite 
beauty and tenderness of a sinner's heart. We 
apply coarse words to move it, and coarse, harsh 
stimulants to beat it into life. And if no answer 
comes we make the bludgeon heavier and the 
language coarser still, as if the soul were not too 
fine to respond to weapons so blunt as these. 
There is coarseness in the fibres of the body, and 
these may be moved by blows; and there is 
coarseness in human nature, and that may be 
roused with threats; but the soul is fine as a 
breath, and will preserve, through misery and 
cruelty and sin, the marvellous delicacy which 
tells how near it lies to the spirit of God who 
gave it birth. Peter was naturally, perhaps, the 
coarsest of all the disciples. Our picture of him 
is of a strong-built, sun-tanned fisherman, robust 



252 PENITENCE 

and fearless in disposition, quick-tempered and 
rash, a man who would bluster and swear — as 
we know he did — a wild man who had the 
making of a memorable sinner had not God made 
him a memorable saint. But inside this wild 
breast there lay a most lovely and delicate plant 
— the most tender plant, perhaps, but one which 
God had growing on the earth. With His own 
hand He had placed it there. With His own 
breath He nourished it from day to day; and 
already the storms in the wild breast were calmed 
and tempered for the holy flower which had 
begun to send a perfume through even coarse 
Peter's life. It always purifies a man to have a 
soul, and there is no such beauty of character as 
that which comes out in unconscious ways from 
a life made fine by Christ. 

So God did not thunder and lighten to make 
Peter hear His voice. God knew that though 
Peter was blustering and swearing with his lips, 
there was dead silence in his soul. A whisper 
at that moment — that moment of high-strung 
feeling — a whisper, even at that moment, was 
not fine enough in its touch for this exquisitely 
sensitive spirit ; so the Lord turned and looked. 
A look, and that was all. But it rent his heart as 
lightning could not, and melted into his soul. 

There is a text in the Psalms which uses the 
strange expression of "the gentleness" of God. 
We wonder sometimes when God is so great, so 
terrible in majesty, that He uses so little violence 



PENITENCE 253 

with us, who are so small. But it is not His way. 
His way is to be gentle. He seldom drives ; but 
draws. He seldom compels ; but leads. He 
remembers we are dust. We think it might be 
quicker work if God threatened and compelled us 
to do right. But God does not want quick work, 
but good work. God does not want slave work, 
but free work. So God is gentle with us all — 
moulding us and winning us many a time with no 
more than a silent look. Coarse treatment never 
wins souls. So God did not drive the chariot of 
His omnipotence up to Peter and command him 
to repent. God did not threaten him with the 
thunderbolts of punishment. God did not even 
speak to him. That one look laid a spell upon 
his soul which was more than voice or language 
through all his after life. 

Here, then, are two great lessons — the gentle- 
ness of God, and the gentleness of the soul — the 
one as divine a marvel as the other. God may be 
dealing with us in some quiet way just now, and 
we not knowing it. So mysteriously has all our 
life been shaped, and so unobtrusive the fingers 
which mould our will, that we scarce believe it 
has been the hand of God at all. But it is God's 
gentleness. And the reason why God made Peter's 
heart sensitive, and yours and mine, was to meet 
this gentleness of His. 

Yes; we misunderstand God altogether, and 
religion, if we think God deals coarsely with 
our souls. If we ask ourselves what things have 



254 PENITENCE 

mainly influenced our life, we find the answer in a 
few silent voices which have preached to us, and 
winds which passed across our soul so gently that 
we scarce could tell when they were come or gone. 
The great physical forces of the world are all silent 
and unseen. The most ponderous of all — gravita- 
tion — came down the ages with step so noiseless 
that centuries of wise men had passed away be- 
fore an ear was quick enough to detect its footfall. 
And the great spiritual forces which startle men 
into thoughts of God and right, which make men 
remember, in the rush of the world's life, that they 
have souls, which bring eternity near to us, when 
time is yet sweet and young, are not the warnings 
from the dead who drop at our side so much, nor 
the threats of judgment to come, nor the retribu- 
tions of the life that is ; but still small voices, which 
penetrate like Peter's look from Christ, and turn 
man's sensitive heart to God. The likeness of a 
long-dead mother's face, the echo of a children's 
hymn laden with pure memories, coming over 
the guilty years which lie between, the fragments 
of an old, forgotten text. These are the messen- 
gers which Heaven sends to call the world to God. 
Let those who are waiting for Christ to thunder 
at their door before they will let Him in, remem- 
ber that the quiet service of the Sabbath Day, 
and the soft whisper of text and Psalm, and the 
plaint of conscience, and the deep, deep heart- 
wish to be whole, are Christ's ways of looking for 
them. Let workers for Christ remember this. 



PENITENCE 255 

In our soul, let us think how God may be turning 
and looking upon us, and searching our hearts, 
like Peter's, for signs of penitence. 

Let those who try to keep their influence for 
Christ, ponder Christ's methods of influence. 
Let those who live in the shade, whose lives are 
naturally bounded by timidity and reserve, be 
glad that, in the genius of Christianity, there is a 
place for even the Gospel of the Face. And let 
those who live in the battle, when coarser weapons 
fail, discern the lesson of Elijah : — "A great and 
strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in 
pieces the rocks before the Lord ; but the Lord 
was not in the wind : and after the wind, an earth- 
quake ; but the Lord was not in the earthquake : 
and after the earthquake a fire ; but the Lord was 
not in the fire : and after the fire a still small 
voice " (i Kings xix. n). 

(3) Thirdly and briefly, for the truth is obvious, 
we learn from Peter's recovery that spiritual expe- 
rience is intense. Peter wept bitterly. And this 
short sentence for ever settles the question of 
emotion in religion. When the Lord turned and 
looked upon Peter, and memory crushed into 
one vivid moment the guilt of those never-to-be- 
forgotten hours, what else could Peter do than 
weep bitterly? Let memory so work on any of 
our lives to-day, and let the eye of the Eternal 
bring the naked truth from out our past, and let 
us ask if " bitterly " is a word too strong to express 
the agony of God's discovery of our sin. Much 



25 6 PENITENCE 

need, indeed, had Peter to weep bitterly ; and if 
there are no bitter tears betimes in our religious 
life, it is not because we have less of Peter's sin, 
but little of Peter's grace. 

It is vain to console ourselves by measuring, as 
we try to do, the small size of the slips we make 
as compared with his. There is such a thing in 
the world as a great sin, but there is no such thing 
as a small sin. The smallest sin is a fall, and a 
fall is a fall from God, and to fall from God is to 
fall the greatest height in the universe. The pub- 
licity of a sin has nothing to do with its size. 
Our fall last week, or yesterday, or to-day, was 
just as great, perhaps, as Peter's fall, or David's, 
or Noah's, or Jacob's, or the many private sins 
which history has made public examples, or the 
Bible placed as beacons to all the race. 

Every sin that was ever done demands a bitter 
penitence. And if there is little emotion in a 
man's religion, it is because there is little intro- 
spection. Religion without emotion is religion 
without reflection. Religion without emotion is 
religion without reflection. Let a man sit calmly 
down to think about his life. Let him think how 
God has dealt with him since ever he lisped 
God's name. Let him add to that how he has 
dealt with God since ever he could sin. And as 
he turns over the secrets of the past, and forgot- 
ten sins come crowding one by one into his 
thoughts, can he help a strong emotion rising in 
his heart, and shedding itself in tears? Yes; 



PENITENCE 257 

religion without emotion is religion without re- 
flection. And, conversely, the man who gives 
himself to earnest thought upon his ways will 
always have enough emotion to generate religious 
fervour in his soul. 

Only let religious emotion run in the right 
channel, let it work itself out in action and not in 
excited feeling, let it be something more than 
nervous agitation or a mere fear, and there is no 
experience more purifying to the soul. No 
doubt it was a great thing for Peter that he wept 
bitterly, and no doubt from the bitterness of that 
night of penitence came much of the sweetness 
that hallowed his after life. 

(4) Fourthly, and lastly, penitence is a lonely 
thing. Peter went out. When the Lord turned 
He looked upon Peter, No one else noticed the 
quiet glance that was exchanged. But it did its 
work. It singled out one man in a moment, and 
cut him off from all the rest of the world. " And 
Peter went out" And there was no man beneath 
the firmament of God that night so much alone 
as Peter with his sin. 

Men know two kinds of loneliness it has been 
said — a loneliness of space and a loneliness of 
spirit. The fisherman in his boat on the wide 
sea knows loneliness of space. But it is no true 
loneliness. For his thoughts have peopled his 
boat with forms of those he loves. But Peter's 
was loneliness of spirit. A distance wider than 
the wide sea cut off the denier from all fellowship 
17 



258 PENITENCE 

of man, and left him to mourn alone. All this 
is spiritual truth. 

When God speaks He likes no other voice to 
break the stillness but His own. And hence 
the place that has always been given to solitude 
in all true religious life. It can be overdone, 
but it can be grossly underdone. And there is 
no lesson more worth insisting on in days like 
ours than this, that when God wants to speak 
with a man He wants that man to be alone. 
And God develops the germ of the recluse 
enough in all true Christian hearts to see that 
it is done. "Talent forms itself in solitude, ,, 
says the German poet; "character amidst the 
storms of life." And if religious character is 
developed and strengthened in the battle of the 
world, it is no less true that religious talents 
are cultivated in quiet contemplation and com- 
munion alone with God. Than the worshippers 
who do all their religion in public there are 
none more profoundly to be pitied ; and he who 
knows not what it is to go out from the crowd 
sometimes and be alone with God is a stranger 
to the most Divine experience that comes to 
sanctify a Christian's heart. 

But what gave the beauty to Peter's loneliness 
was this — that he took God's time to be alone. 
Peter's penitence was not only an intense thing 
and a lonely thing, it was an immediate thing. 
Peter need not have gone out that time. He 
might have stood where he was, and braved it 



PENITENCE 259 

out. God has looked at us when we were sin- 
ning; and we did not do as Peter did. He lost 
no time between his penitence and his sin. But 
we spoil the grace of our penitence many a time 
by waiting till the sin grows old. We do it on 
purpose. Time seems to smooth the roughness 
off our sin and take its bitterness away. And 
we postpone our penitence till we think the edge 
is off the sharpness of the wrong. As if time, 
as if eternity could ever make a sinner's sin less 
black. Sin is always at its maximum. And no 
man ever gets off with penitence at its minimum. 
The time for penitence is just the time when we 
have sinned. And that perhaps is now. Peter's 
penitence came sharp upon his sin. It was not 
on his death-bed or in his after life. But just 
when he had sinned. Many a man who post- 
pones his penitence till he cannot help it, post- 
pones his penitence till it cannot help him, and 
will not see the Lord turning till He turns and 
looks upon him in judgment. Then, indeed, he 
goes out to weep. But it is out into that night 
which knows no dawn. 

Such are the lessons from Peter's penitence. 
Just one word more. 

When God speaks He speaks so loud that all 
the voices of the world seem dumb. And yet 
when God speaks He speaks so softly that no 
one hears the whisper but yourself. To-day, 
perhaps, as the service has gone on, the Lord 
has turned and looked on some one here. And 



260 PENITENCE 

the soul of some one has gone out to weep. No 
one noticed where the Lord's glance fell, and 
no one knows in the church that it was — you. 
You sit there in your wonted place. But your 
spirit is far away just now, dealing with some 
old sin, and God is giving you a lesson Himself 
— the bitterest, yet the sweetest lesson of your 
life, in heartfelt penitence. Come not back into 
the crowd till the Lord has turned and looked 
on you again, as He looked at the thief upon the 
cross, and you have beheld the " glory of the love 
of God in the face of Jesus." 



NUMBER XIII 

What is God's Will? 

" The God of our fathers hath chosen thee that thou 
shoitldest know His will." — Acts xxii. 14. 

AST Sunday evening I was trying to show 
-*- ' you that the end of religion was to do the 
will of God. Some time ago I showed you like- 
wise that the end of life was to do the will of 
God, and that the end of Christ's life lay in this 
too. " I come," He said, " to do the will of Him 
that sent Me." 

We resume to-day a subject, the thread of 
which has been broken by the interval of a few 
Sabbaths — the subject of the Will of God. 

Already we have tried to learn two lessons : — 

1. That the end of our life is to do the will of 
God. 

2. That this was the end of Christ's life. 

It will help to recall what has gone before if we 
compare this with another definition of the end of 
life with which we are all familiar. 

Of course this is not the most complete state- 
ment of the end of our life ; but it is the most 



262 WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 

practical, and it will recall the previous conclu- 
sions if we refer to this for a moment. 

Our Shorter Catechism, for instance, puts the 
end of life quite in different words. " Man's chief 
end," it says, " is to glorify God and enjoy Him 
for ever." But this answer is just too great for 
us. There is too much in it. It is really the 
same answer, but turned towards God. It is too 
great to understand. It is as true, but too pro- 
foundly true. It is wonderfully conceived and put 
together, but it goes past us. It expresses the 
end of life God-ward — determines the quality of 
all the things we do by the extent to which they 
make way in the world for the everywhere coming 
glory of God. But this is too wonderful for us. 
We want a principle life-ward as well as God- 
ward. We want something to tell us what to 
do with the things beneath us and around us 
and within us, as well as the things above us. 
Therefore there is a human side to the Shorter 
Catechism's answer. 

What is the chief end of man? 

Man's chief end is to do the will of God. 

In one sense this is not such a Divine answer. 
But we are not divine. We understand God's 
will — God's glory only faintly. We are only 
human yet, and " glory " is a word for heaven. 

Ask a schoolboy, learning the first question in 
the Catechism, to do a certain thing for the glory 
of God. The opportunity of doing the thing 
may be gone before the idea can be driven into 



WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 263 

the boy's head of what the glory of God means. 
But tell him to do the thing because it is God's 
will that he should do it — he understands that. 
He knows that God's will is just what God likes, 
and what he himself probably does not like. 
And the conception of it from this side is so 
clear that no schoolboy even need miss the end 
of life — for that is simply doing what God likes. 
If our souls are not great enough, then, to think 
of God's glory as the practical rule of life, let them 
not be too small to think of God's will. And if 
we look after the end of life from this side, God 
will from the other. Do we the will of God, God 
will see that it glorifies God. 

Let us suppose, then, that after casting about 
for an object in life, we have at last stopped at 
this — the end of my life is to do the will of God. 
Let us suppose also that we have got over the 
disappointment of finding that there is nothing 
higher for us to do in the world. Or, perhaps, 
taking the other side, suppose we are beginning 
to feel the splendid conviction that, after all, our 
obscure life is not to be wasted : that having this 
ideal principle within it, it may yet be as great in 
its homely surroundings as the greatest human 
life — seeing that no man can do more with his 
life than the will of God — that though we may 
never be famous or powerful or called to heroic 
suffering or acts of self-denial which will vibrate 
through history: that though we are neither 
intended to be apostles nor missionaries noi 



264 WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 

martyrs, but to be common people living in 
common houses, spending the day in common 
offices or common kitchens, yet doing the will of 
God there, we shall do as much as apostle or 
missionary or martyr — seeing that they can do 
no more than do God's will where they are, even 
as we can do as much where we are — and answer 
the end of our life as truly, faithfully, and trium- 
phantly as they. 

Suppose we feel all this, and desire, as we stand 
on the threshold of the truly ideal life, that, God 
helping us, we shall live it if we may, we are met at 
once with the question, How are we ever to know 
what the will of God can be ? The chief end of 
life is to do the will of God. Question : How 
am I to know the will of God — to know it clearly 
and definitely? Is it possible? and if so, how ? 

Now, to begin with, we have probably an 
opinion on the matter already. And if you were 
to express it, it would be this : that it is not pos- 
sible. You have thought about the will of God, 
and read and thought, and thought and read, and 
you have come to this conclusion, that the will 
of God is a very mysterious thing — a very mys- 
terious thing, which some people may have re- 
vealed to them, but does not seem in any way 
possible to you. 

Your nature is different from other people's; 
and though you have strained your eyes in prayer 
and thought, you have never seen the will of God 
yet. And if you ever have been in the same line 



WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 265 

with it, it has only been by chance, for you can 
see no principle in it, nor any certainty of ever 
being in the same line again. One or two special 
occasions, indeed, you can recall when you think 
you were near the will of God, but they must have 
been special interpositions on God's part. He 
does not show His will every day like that: once 
or twice only in a lifetime, that is enough of this 
high experience one ever dare expect. 

Now, of course, if this is true, it is clearly no 
use going on to find out what God's will is if the 
thing is impossible. If this experience is correct 
— and we cannot know God's will for the mystery 
of it — we may as well give up the ideal life at 
once. But if you examined this experience, even 
cursorily, you would find at once how far away 
from the point it was. 

1. In the first place, it is merely an experience ; 
it is exclusively based on your own experience, not 
on God's thoughts regarding it, but on your own 
thoughts. The true name for this is presumption, 

2. It assumes that, the end of life being to do 
God's will, and you not being able to know God's 
will, are therefore not responsible for fulfilling the 
end of life. This is self-deception. 

3. It suggests the idea that God could teach 
you His will if He liked, seeing that He had done 
so once or twice by your own admission. And 
yet, though He wants you to do His will, and you 
want it too, He deliberately refuses to tell you 
what it is. This is an accusation against God. 



266 WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 

It is something worse than unreasonable, there- 
fore, to say that we think it hopeless for us ever 
to know God's will. On the contrary, indeed, 
there is a strong presumption that we should find 
it out. For if it is so important a thing that the 
very end of life is involved in it, it would be 
absurd to imagine that God should keep us even 
the least in the dark as to what His will may 
mean. 

And this presumption is changed into a cer- 
tainty when we balance our minds for a moment 
on the terms of this text. " The God of our fa- 
thers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know 
His will." It is not simply a matter of presump- 
tion, it is a matter of election* Have you ever 
thought of this strange, deep calling of God? 
We are called to salvation, we have thought of 
that; we are called to holiness, we have thought 
of that ; but as great as either is this, we are 
called to know God's will. We are answering 
our call in other ways ; are we answering it in 
this : What is God's will ? Are we knowing God's 
will ? How much have we learned of that to which 
we have been called ? And is it our prayer con- 
tinually, as it was his to whom these words were 
said, that we may be " filled with the knowledge 
of His will"? 

It is a reasonable object of search, then, to find 
out what God's will for us may be. And it is a 
reasonable expectation that we may find it out so 
fully as to know at any moment whether we be 



WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 267 

in the line of it or no ; and when difficulty arises 
about the next step of our life, we may have 
absolute certainty which way God's will inclines. 
There are many kinds of assurance in religion ; 
and it is as important to have assurance of God's 
will as to have assurance of God's salvation. For 
just as the loss of assurance of salvation means 
absence of peace and faith, and usefulness, so 
absence of assurance of God's will means miser- 
able Christian life, imperfect Christian character, 
and impaired Christian usefulness. 

We start our investigation, therefore, in the be- 
lief that God must have light for all of us on the 
subject of His will, and with the desire to have 
assurance in the guidance of our life by God as 
clear and strong as of its redemption and salva- 
tion by Christ. 

In one sense, of course, no man can know the 
will of God, even as in one sense no man can 
know God Himself. God's will is a great and in- 
finite mystery — a thing of mighty mass and 
volume, which can no more be measured out to 
hungry souls in human sentences than the eternal 
knowledge of God or the boundless love of Christ. 
But even as there is a sense in which one poor 
human soul can hold enough of the eternal 
knowledge of God and the boundless love of 
Christ, so is there a sense in which God can put 
as much of His will into human words as human 
hearts can bear — as much as human wills can 
will or human lives perform. 



268 WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 

When we come to put this will into human 
words we find that it divides itself into two great 
parts. 

I. There is a part of God's will which every 
one may know — a universal part. 

II. A part of God's will which no one knows 
but you — a particular part 

(i) A universal part — for every one. (2) A 
particular part — for the individual. 

I. To begin with the first. There is a part of 
God's will which every one may know. It is 
written in Divine characters in two sacred books, 
which every man may read. The one of them 
is the Bible, the other is Nature. The Bible is 
God's will in words, in formal thoughts, in grace. 
Nature is God's will in matter and tissue and force. 
Nature is not often considered a part of God's 
will. But it is a part, and a great part, and the 
first part. And perhaps one reason why some 
never know the second is because they yield no 
full obedience to the first. God's law of progress 
is from the lower to the higher; and scant obedi- 
ence at the beginning of His will means disobedi- 
ence with the rest. The laws of nature are the 
will of God for our bodies. As there is a will of 
God for our higher nature — the moral laws — 
as emphatically is there a will of God for the 
lower — the natural laws. If you would know 
God's will in the higher, therefore, you must be- 
gin with God's will in the lower : which simply 
means this — that if you want to live the ideal 



WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 269 

life, you must begin with the ideal body. The 
law of moderation, the law of sleep, the law of 
regularity, the law of exercise, the law of cleanli- 
ness — this is the law or will of God for you. 
This is the first law, the beginning of will for you. 
And if we are ambitious to get on to do God's 
will in the higher reaches, let us respect it as 
much in the lower; for there may be as much of 
God's will in minor things, as much of God's will 
in taking good bread and pure water, as in keep- 
ing a good conscience or living a pure life. 
Who ever heard of gluttony doing God's will, or 
laziness, or uncleanness, or the man who was 
careless and wanton of natural life? Let a man 
disobey God in these, and you have no certainty 
that he has any true principle for obeying God 
in anything else : for God's will does not only run 
in to the church and the prayer-meeting and the 
higher chambers of the soul, but into the com- 
mon rooms at home down to wardrobe and larder 
and cellar, and into the bodily frame down to 
blood and muscle and brain. 

This, then, is the first contribution to the con- 
tents of the will of God. And, for distinction, 
they may be called the physical contents. 

Next in order we come to the moral contents, 
both of these coming under the same head as 
parts of God's will which every one may 
know. 

These moral contents, as we have seen, are con- 
tained in the word of God; and the Bible has a 



270 WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 

variety of names for them, such as testimonies, 
laws, precepts, statutes, commandments. 

Now this is a much more formidable array 
than the physical contents. It is one thing to 
be in physical condition — a prize-fighter may 
be that, though not in a religious way — but it 
is quite another to be in moral condition. And 
it is a difficult matter to explain exactly what 
God's will in this great sense is; for, on the one 
hand, there is the danger of elevating it so high 
as to frighten the timid soul from ever attempt- 
ing to reach it, and on the other the insensible 
tendency to lower it to human standards and 
aims. 

It must be understood, however, to the full 
that, as far as its formidableness is concerned, 
that is absolutely unchangeable. God's moral 
lav/ cannot be toned down into anything less 
binding, less absolutely moral, less infinitely 
significant. Whatever it means, is meant for 
every man in its rigid truth as the definite and 
formal expression of God's will for him. 

From the moral side there are three differ- 
ent departments of God's will. Foremost, and 
apparently most rigid of all, are the Ten Com- 
mandments. Now the Ten Commandments 
contain, in a few sentences, one of the largest- 
known portions of God's will. They form the 
most strict code of morality in the world: the 
basis of all others, the most venerable and uni- 
versal expression of the will of God for man. 



WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 271 

Following upon this (2) there come the Beati- 
tudes of Christ. This is another large portion 
of God's will. This forms the most unique code 
of morality in the world, the most complete 
and lovely additional expression of the will of 
God for Christians. Passing through the human 
heart of Christ, the older commandment of the 
Creator becomes the soft and mellow beatitude 
of the Saviour — passes from the colder domain 
of law with a penalty on failure, to the warm 
region of love with a benediction on success. 
These are the two chief elements in the moral 
part of the will of God for man. But there is a 
third set of laws and rules, which are not to be 
found exactly expressed in either of these. The 
Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes take up 
most of the room in God's will, but there are 
shades of precept still unexpressed which also 
have their place. Hence we must add to all 
this mass of law and beatitude many more laws 
and many more beatitudes which lie enclosed 
in other texts, and other words of Christ, which 
have their place like the rest as portions of God's 
will. 

Here, then, we already know' a great part of 
what God's will is; although, perhaps, we have 
not often called it by this name. And it may 
be worth while, before going on to find out any 
more, to pause for a moment and find out how 
to practise this. 

For, perhaps, when we see how great a thing 



272 WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 

it is, this will of God, our impulse for the 
moment is to wish we had not known. We 
were building ourselves up with the idea that 
we were going to try this life, and that it was 
easy and smooth compared with the life we left. 
There was a better future opening to us, with 
visions of happiness and holiness and even of 
usefulness to God. But our hopes are dashed 
now. How can we do God's will ? — this compli- 
cated mass of rules and statutes, each bristling 
with the certainty of a thousand breakages. 
How can we keep these ten grave laws, with 
their unflinching scorn of compromise and exact- 
ing obligation, to the uttermost jot and tittle? 
How can our coarse spirits breathe the exquisite 
air of these beatitudes, or fit our wayward wills 
to the narrow mould of all these binding texts? 
Can God know how weak we are, and blind 
and biassed towards the breakages, ere ever we 
thought of Him? Can He think how impos- 
sible it is to keep these laws, even for one close- 
watched, experimental hour? Did Christ really 
mean it — not some lesser thing than this — 
when He taught in the ideal prayer that God's 
will was to be done on earth even as it is done 
in heaven? 

There can be but one answer. "God hath 
chosen thee, that thou shouldest know His will/ 1 
And God expects from each of us neither less 
nor more than this. He knows the frailty of 
our frame; He remembers we are dust. And 



WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 273 

yet such dust that He has given each of us the 
divinest call to the vastest thing in heaven. 
There, by the side of our frailty, He lays down 
His holy will — lays it down confidingly, as if a 
child could take it in its grasp, and, as if He 
mean the child to fondle it and bear it in its 
breast, He says, "If a man love Me, he will 
keep My words. ,, 

There must be something, therefore, to ease 
the apparent hopelessness of doing this will of 
God — something to give us heart to go on with 
it, to give strength to obey God's call. We 
were not prepared to find it running in to the 
roots of things like this; but there must be 
something brighter somewhere than the dark 
side we have seen. Well, then, let us think for 
a moment on these points. 

1. In the first place, there must be such laws. 
God is a King — His kingdom the kingdom of 
heaven. His people are His subjects. Sub- 
jects must have laws. Therefore we start with 
a necessity. Laws must be. But 

2. Who are afraid of law? Good subjects? 

Never. Criminals are afraid of laws. Who 

dread the laws of this country, who cry out 

against them, would abolish them if they could? 

Drunkards, thieves, murderers. Who love the 

laws of this country? The honest, the wise and 

good. Then who are afraid of God's laws — 

would abolish them if they could ? The wicked, 

the profligate, the licentious. But you would 
18 



274 WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 

not. The just and holy, the pure in heart and 
life love them, respect them. More still, they 
demand them. It would be no kingdom with- 
out them — no kingdom worth belonging to. If 
it were not for its laws of truth and purity, and 
its promise of protection from unrighteousness 
and sin, it would have no charm for them. It is 
the inaccessible might and purity of will in the 
kingdom of God that draws all other wills as 
subjects to its sway. It is not only not hard, 
therefore, that there should be such elements in 
God's will as law; it is a privilege. And it is 
more than a privilege to have them. For 

3. It is a privilege to do them. And it is a 
peculiar privilege this. It consists partly in 
forgetting that they are laws — in changing 
their names, commandment, precept, testimony, 
statute, into this- — the will of God. No stern- 
ness then can enter with the thought, for God's 
name is in the name and the help of God, and 
the power of God, and the constraining love of 
Christ. This takes away the hopelessness of 
trying to keep God's will. It makes it a per- 
sonal thing, a relation to a living will, not to 
didactic law. 

And there is, further, a wonderful provision 
near it. When God puts down His great will 
beside me, telling me to do it, He puts down 
just beside it as great a thing, His Love. And 
as my soul trembles at the tearfulness of will, 
Love comes with its calm omnipotence, and 



WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 275 

draws it to itself; then takes my timid will and 
twines it around His, till mine is fierce with pas- 
sion to serve, and strong to do His will. Just 
as if some mighty task was laid to an infant's 
hand, and the engine-grasp of a giant strength- 
ened it with his own. Where God's law is, is 
' God' s love. Look at Law — it withers your very 
soul with its stern, inexorable face. But look at 
Love, or look at God's will, which means look 
at Love's will, and you are re -assured, and your 
heart grows strong. No martyr dies for abstract 
truth. For a person, for God, he will die a 
triple death. So no man will die for God's law. 
But for God he will do it. Where God's will, 
then, seems strong to command, God's love is 
strong to obey. Hence the profound text, " Love 
is the fulfilling of the law. And this is the love 
of God that we keep His commandments, and 
His commandments are not grievous." 

God's will, then, is as great as God, as high as 
heaven, yet as easy as love. For love knows no 
hardness, and feels no yoke. It desires no yield- 
ing to its poverty in anything it loves. Let God 
be greater, and His will sterner, love will be 
stronger and obedience but more true. Let not 
God come down to me, slacken truth for me, 
make His will 'weaker for me : my interests, as 
subject, are safer with my King, are greater with 
the greatness of my King — only give me love, 
pure, burning love and loyalty to Him, and I 
shall climb from law to law through grace and 



276 WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 

glory to the place beside the throne where the 
angels do His will. 

There are two ways, therefore, of looking at 
God's will — one looking at the love side of it, 
the other at the law ; the one ending in triumph, 
the other in despair ; the one a liberty, the other 
a slavery. And you might illustrate this in a 
simple way, to make it finally clear — for this is 
the hardest point to hold -— in some such way as 
this : — 

Suppose you go into a workshop occasionally, 
and watch the workmen at their task. The ma- 
jority do their work in an uninterested, mechan- 
ical sort of way. Everything is done with the 
most proper exactness and precision — almost 
with slavish precision, a narrower watch would 
say. They come exactly at the hour in the morn- 
ing, and throw down their work to a second ex- 
actly when the closing bell has rung. There is a 
certain punctiliousness about them, and a scrupu- 
losity about their work, and as part cause of it, 
perhaps, you observe an uncomfortable turning 
of the head occasionally as if some eye was upon 
them, then a dogged going on of their work again, 
as if it were always done under some restraint. 

But among the workmen you will notice one 
who seems to work on different principles. 
There is a buoyancy and cheerfulness about him 
as he goes about his work, which is foreign to all 
the rest. You will see him at his place some- 
times even before the bell has rung, and if unfin- 



WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 277 

ished work be in his hands when closing time 
has come, he does not mind an extra five minutes 
when all the others are gone. What strikes you 
about him is the absence of that punctiliousness 
which marked the other's work. It does not 
seem at all a tyranny to him, but even a freedom 
and a pleasure ; and though he is apparently not 
so mechanical in his movements as his mates, 
his work seems better done and greater, despite 
the ease and light-heartedness which mark him 
through its course. Now the difference between 
them is this. The first set of men are hired work- 
men. The man by himself is the master's son. 
Not that he is outwardly different ; he is a common 
workman in a fustian jacket like the rest. But he 
is the master s son. The first set work for wages, 
come in at regulation hours, lest aught be kept 
off their wages, keep the workshop laws, in terror 
of losing their place. But the son keeps them, 
and keeps them better, not for wages, but for love. 
So the Christian keeps the will or the laws of 
God because of the love of God. Not because 
they are workshop regulations framed and hung 
up before him at every moment of his life, but 
because they are his Master's will. They are as 
natural to him as air. He would never think of 
not keeping them. His meat is to do the will of 
his Father which is in heaven. There is no room 
for punctiliousness in this the true way of doing 
God's will. A scrupulous Christian is a hired 
servant and not the Master's son. 



2/8 WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 

II. But now, very briefly, in the second and 
last place, there is an unknown part of God's 
will — at least, a part which is only known to you. 
There is God's will for the world, and God's will 
for the individual. There is God's will written on 
tables of stones for all the world to read. There 
is God's will carved in sacred hieroglyphic which 
no one reads but you. There is God's will rolling 
in thunder over the life of universal man. There 
is God's will dropped softly on the believer's ear 
in angel whispers or the still small voice of God. 
This, the final element in God's will, to distinguish 
it from the moral and physical contents which go 
before, one might call the more strictly spiritual 
content. 

This is a distinct addition to the other parts — 
an addition, too, which many men ignore, and 
other men deny. But there is such a region in 
God's will — a region unmapped in human charts, 
unknown to human books, a region for the pure 
in heart, for the upright, for the true. It is a 
land of mystery to those who know it not, a land 
of foolishness, and weaknesses, and delusive sights 
and sounds. But there is a land where the Spirit 
moves, a luminous land, a walking in God's light. 
There is where God's own people have their 
breathing from above, where each saint's steps 
are ordered of the Lord. 

Now this region may be distinguished from the 
other regions. For one thing, by its secrecy. It 
is a private thing; between God and you. You 



WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 279 

want to know what to do next — your calling in 
life, for instance. You want to know what action 
to take in a certain matter. You want to know 
what to do with your money. You want to know 
whether to go into a certain scheme or not. Then 
you enter into this private chamber of God's will, 
and ask the private question, " Lord, what wouldest 
thou have me to do?" 

Then it is distinguished by its action. It con- 
cerns a different department of our life. The first 
part of God's will, all that has gone before, affects 
our character. But this affects something more. 
It affects our career. And this is an important 
distinction. A man's career in life is almost as 
important as his character in life ; that is to say, 
it is almost as important to God, which is the real 
question. If character is the end of life, then the 
ideal career is just where character can best be 
established and developed, which means that a 
man is to live for his character. But if God's will 
is the end of life, God may have a will for my 
career as well as for my character, which does not 
mean that a man is to live for his career, but for 
God's wilt in his character through his career. 

I may want to put all my work upon my charac- 
ter. But God may want my work for something 
else. He may want to use me, for instance ; I 
may not know why, or when, or how, or to whom. 
But it is possible He may need me, for some- 
thing or other at some time or other. It may 
be all through my life, or at some particular part 



280 WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 

of my life which may be past now, or may be 
still to come. At all events, I must hold myself 
in readiness and let Him trace my path; for 
though it does not look now as if He had any- 
thing for me to do, the next turn of the road may 
bring it ; so I must watch the turnings of the 
road for God. Even for the chance of God need- 
ing me it is worth while doing this — the chance 
of Him needing me even once. There is a man 
in Scripture whom God perhaps used but once. 
He may have done many other things for God ; 
still, there was one thing God gave him to do so 
far overshadowing all other things that he seems 
to have done but this. He seems, indeed, to 
have been born, to have lived and died for this. 
It is the only one thing we know about him. 
But it is a great thing. His name was Ananias. 
He was the instrument in the conversion of Paul. 
What was he doing in Damascus that day, when 
Paul arrived under conviction of sin? Why was 
he living in Damascus at all? Because he was 
born there, and his father before him, perhaps 
you will say. Let it be so. A few will be glad 
to cherish a higher thought. He was a good 
man, and his steps were ordered — by ordinary 
means, if you like — by the Lord. Could Ana- 
nias not have been as good a man in Jericho, 
or Antioch, or Ephesus? Quite as good. His 
character might almost have been the same. But 
his career would have been different. And y pos- 
sibly, his character might have been different 



WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 281 

from the touch of God upon his career. For 
when God comes into a man's career, it some- 
times makes a mighty difference on his charac- 
ter — teaches him to live less for character and 
for himself, and more for his career and for God, 
rather more for both — more for his character 
by living more for his career. Gold is gold wher- 
ever it is ; but it is some difference to the world 
whether it make a communion cup or gild the 
proscenium of a theatre. 

There is a difference, then, between God in char- 
acter and God in career. You may have God in 
your character without having God in your career. 
Perhaps you should have been in London to-day, 
perhaps in China. Perhaps you should have been 
a missionary; perhaps you should be one yet. 
Perhaps you should have been in poorer circum- 
stances, or in a different business altogether. Per- 
haps you have chosen a broader path than God 
would have willed for you. Your character may 
not seem to have suffered ; but your career has. 
You may be doing God's will with one hand con- 
secrated to Christ, and making your own auto- 
biography with the other consecrated to self. 

Would you know the will of God, then? Con- 
sult God about your career. It does not follow 
because He has done nothing with you last week 
or last year, He may have nothing for you now. 
God's will in career is mostly an unexpected thing 
— it comes as a surprise. God's servants work 
on short notices. Paul used to have to go off to 



282 WHAT IS GOD'S WILL? 

what was the end of the world in those days, on a 
few hours' warning. And so may you and I. It 
is not a thing to startle us, to make us alarmed at, 
to make us say, "If this might be the upshot we 
would let God's will alone." It would be a wonder- 
ful privilege to come to you or me; yes, a won- 
derful privilege that He should count us worthy 
to suffer this or anything more for Him. 

But you are old, you say. Ananias was old. 
Or steeped in a profession. Paul was steeped in 
a profession. Or you are inexperienced and 
young. A lad came to Jesus once with five 
loaves and two small fishes; but they fed five 
thousand men. So bring your lad's experience, 
your young offer of service, and God may use 
you to twice five thousand souls. That does not 
mean that you are to do it. But be in God's 
counsels, and He will teach you whether or no. 

How are you to know this secret will of God? 
It is a great question. We cannot touch it now. 
Let this suffice. It can be known. It can be 
known to you. The steps of a good man are 
ordered by the Lord. "I will guide thee with 
Mine eye." Unto the upright in heart He shall 
cause light to arise in darkness. This is not 
mysticism, no visionary's dream. It is not to 
drown the reason with enthusiasm's airy hope or 
supersede the word of God with fanaticism's blind 
caprice. No, it is not there. It is what Christ 
said, " The sheep hear his voice, and he calleth 
his own sheep by name, and leadeth them." 



NUMBER XIV 

The Relation of the Will 
of God to Sanctification 

" This is the will of God, even your sanctification ." 

i Thess. iv. 3. 

" As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in 
all manner of conversation; because it is written, ' Be 
ye holy, for I am holy. 1 *" — 1 Pet. i. 15, 16. 

" Lo, I come to do Thy will, God. . . . By the which 
will we are sanctified through the offering of the body 
of Jesus Christ once for all" — Heb. x. 9, 10. 

OUR discussion of the will of God landed us 
two Sabbaths ago — perhaps in rather an 
unforeseen way — in the great subject of sancti- 
fication. You may remember that we then made 
this discovery, that the end of sanctification, in 
the sense of consecration, is to do the will of God, 
and that the proof was based on these words: 
" Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, 
acceptable unto God, and be not conformed to 
this world. " Why? " That ye may prove what 
is that good and acceptable and perfect will of 
God." We are to present ourselves to God, not 
because it is a pleasant and luxurious thing to 
live in the state of consecration, but to do the 



284 THE WILL OF GOD 

will of God. Or, to sum this up in a single 
sentence, it might read : " This is sanctification, 
even to prove the will of God." 

But our text to-day is apparently the very 
opposite of this. " This is the will of God, even 
your sanctification." Last day it looked as if 
sanctification was in order to the will of God; 
now it looks as if the will of God was in order 
to sanctification. 

It is evident, therefore, that there is still some- 
thing in this part of the subject which demands 
a clearance. And in order to gain this it will be 
necessary to present the other side of the same 
question, and complete the view of the subject of 
holiness itself. 

There are in the Bible two great meanings to the 
word " sanctification." The first may be roughly 
called the Old Testament word. The second is 
identified, but not exclusively, with the New. 
The Old Testament meaning had this peculiarity, 
that it did not necessarily imply any inward 
change in the heart sanctified. In fact, it was 
not even necessarily applied to hearts at all, but 
to things. A field could be sanctified, a house 
could be sanctified, an altar, a tabernacle, gold 
and silver vessels, the garments of the priest, the 
cities of refuge. Anything, in short, that was set 
apart for sacred use was said to be sanctified. 
But the New Testament word had a deeper mean- 
ing. It meant not only outward consecration, 
but inward holiness. It meant an internal puri- 



THE WILL OF GOD 285 

fication of the heart from all uncleanness, and an 
enduing it with the holy mind of Christ. It was 
not a mere separation like the first, but a visita- 
tion — a separation from the lower world, and a 
visitation from the higher, the coming in of God's 
Spirit from above with a principle of holiness 
that was to work an inward likeness to the char- 
acter of God. 

The practical object of the first process is 
mainly to put the thing in position where God 
can use it. A golden candlestick was sanctified, 
so that it might be of some use to God. A house 
was sanctified, so that it might be exclusively His 
— to do what He liked with. In like manner a 
man is consecrated — that God may use him. It 
is the process by which he is got into position 
for God. And all that sanctification does for him, 
in the first sense of the word, is so to put him in 
position that he shall always be within reach of 
God — that he shall do what God likes, do, that 
is to say, what God wills. 

But there is something more in sanctification 
than man's merely being a tool in the hands 
of God. If there were not, automatons could 
do the work far better than men. They would 
never oppose God's will, and they would always 
be in position. But God's will has a reaction 
upon the instruments whom He employs. God's 
will does not stop with His will, as it were. 
It recoils back upon the person using it, and 
benefits him. If the instrument is a sanctified 



286 THE WILL OF GOD 

cup, or a sanctified house, it does not recoil back, 
and make an internal change in them; but if 
it is a person who does God's will, God's will is 
not only done, but the person or doer is affected. 
God never keeps anything all to Himself. He 
who so loved the world that He gave His only 
begotten Son, does He net with Him also freely 
give us all things? His Son is for us, His love 
is for us, His will is for us. How do we know 
that it is for us ? Because this is the will of God, 
even your sanctification. Whatever else maybe 
involved in it, this is in it; whatever else He 
may get from it, this is something which you 
get, your sanctification. " By the which will," 
as Hebrews says, " we are sanctified." " This 
is My will, not My gain, but yours; not My 
eternal advantage, but yours ; not My holiness, 
but ' your sanctification.' " Do you think God 
wants your body when He asks you to present 
it to Him? Do you think it is for His sake that 
He asks it, that He might be enriched by it? 
God could make a thousand better with a breath. 
It is for your sake He asks it. He wants your 
gift to give you His gift — your gift which was 
just in the way of His gift. He wants your will 
out of the way, to make room for His will. You 
give everything to God. God gives it all back 
again, and more. You present your body a liv- 
ing sacrifice that you may prove God's will. 
You shall prove it by getting back your body 
— a glorified body. You lose the world that 



THE WILL OF GOD 287 

you may prove God's will. God's will is that 
you shall gain heaven. This is the will of God, 
therefore, that you should gain heaven. Or this 
is the will of God that you should gain holiness, 
for holiness is heaven. Or this is the will of 
God, even your sanctification. 

To sum up these facts, then, we find that they 
shape themselves into these two propositions : 

1. That our sanctification, or, more strictly, 
our consecration, is in order to the will of God, 
" to prove what is that good and great and 
acceptable will of God." 

2. That this reacts upon ourselves, a conspicu- 
ous part of God's will being that we should be 
personally holy. " This is the will of God, even 
your sanctification. ,, 

The first of these has already been discussed, 
and now the question comes to be how we can best 
fulfil this conspicuous part of the will of God and 
become holy ourselves. It is God's will for all of 
us that we should become holy. How are we to 
become holy ? 

We have probably asked this question many 
times already in our life. We have thought, and 
read, and prayed about it, and perhaps have 
never yet reached the conclusion how indeed we 
are to become holy. Perhaps the question has 
long ago assumed another and evasive form with 
us. " When are we going to become holy ? " or 
perhaps a hopeless form, " How ever are we to 
become holy ?" 



288 THE WILL OF GOD 

Now the real way out of the difficulty is to ask 
a deeper question still : " Why do I want to be 
holy ? " All the great difficulties of religion are 
centred round our motives. Impurities in a 
spiritual stream generally mean impurities at the 
spiritual source. And all fertility or barrenness 
of soul depend upon which source supplies the 
streams of the desires. Our difficulties about 
becoming holy, therefore, most likely lie in our 
reasons for wanting to become holy. For if you 
grant the true motive to holiness, you need no 
definition of holiness. True holiness lies touch- 
ing the true motive. We shall get nearer the 
true roots of holiness, therefore, if we spend a 
little time over the root-question : " Why do I 
want to be holy ? " 

I. The first thing which started some of us to 
search for a better life, perhaps, was Infection. 
We caught an infection for a better life from 
some one we knew. We were idling our own 
way through life, when some one crossed our 
path — some one with high aims and great en- 
thusiasms. We were taken with the principles 
on which that life was lived. Its noble purpose 
charmed us : its disregard of the petty troubles 
and cares of life astonished us. We felt unac- 
countably interested in it. There was a romance 
in its earnestness and self-denial that captivated 
us, and we thought we should like to take down 
our own life, and put it together again on this new 
plan. So we got our first motive to holiness. 



THE WILL OF GOD 289 

Now this was not a wrong motive — it was 
only an imperfect one. It answered its purpose 
— so far. For God takes strange ways to start 
a man's religion. There is nothing more remark- 
able in the history of conversion, for instance, 
than the infinite diversity of answers to this 
question : " What made you first think about 
your soul?" God does take strange ways to 
start a man for heaven. The way home is some- 
times shown him by an unexpected finger-post; 
and from a motive so unworthy that he dare 
not tell it in after-life, there comes to many 
a man his first impulses toward God. And long 
after he has begun to run the Christian race, 
God may try to hasten his lagging steps by the 
spur of a motive as far beneath an heir of heaven 
as his spiritual life is beneath what it ought 
to be. 

But the principle to be noted through it all 
is this, — that the motives which God allows us 
to start on are not the ones we are to live on. 
It may be adversity in business that gives us a 
fresh start. It may be affliction, or ambition, 
or church-pride, or a thousand things. But the 
impulse cannot last, and it cannot carry us far. 
And there must come a time of exchange for 
a higher one if we would grow in grace, or move 
onward into a holier life. A man's motive must 
grow, if grace would grow. And many a man 
has to live on old grace, because he lives on an 
old motive. God let us begin with a lower one, 
*9 



290 THE WILL OF GOD 

and then when He gave us more grace, it was 
that we might get a higher one; but we spent 
the grace on something else, and our motive is 
no higher than before. So, although we got a 
start in religion, we were little the better of it, 
and our whole life has stood still for want of a 
strong enough motive to go on. 

2. But it was not necessary that we should 
have caught our infection from a friend. There 
is another great source of infection, and some 
of us are breathing its atmosphere every day — 
books. We may have got our motives to be good 
from a book. 

We found in works on ethics, and in all great 
poets, and even perhaps in some novels, that the 
highest aim of life was to be true and pure and 
good. We found modern literature ringing with 
the praises of virtue. By-and-by we began to 
respect it, then to admire it, then to wish for it. 
Thus we caught the enthusiasm for purity which 
has changed our whole lives, in a way, and given 
us a chief motive to religion. 

Well, we must thank God for having given us 
a start, anyhow. It is something to have begun. 
It is a great thing to have an enthusiasm to be 
true and pure and good. Nor will the Bible ever 
be jealous of any lesser book which God may 
use to stir men up to a better life. But all lesser 
books sin and come short. And the greatest 
motives of the greatest of the lesser books fall as 
far short of the glory of God as those who live 



THE WILL OF GOD 291 

only on the enthusiasms which are kindled on 
the altar of modern literature fall short of the life 
and mind of Christ. God may give these mo- 
tives to a man to start with. If he will not look 
into God's book for them, God may see fit to put 
something remotely like them into men's books. 
Jesus Christ used to come to men just where 
they were. There is no place on earth so dark 
that the light of heaven will not come to it ; and 
there is no spot of earth where God may not 
choose to raise a monument of His love. There 
is always room anywhere in the world for a holy 
thought. It may come to a man on the road- 
side, as to Paul; or in the fork of a sycamore 
tree, as to Zacchaeus. It may come to him at 
his boats, as to Peter ; or at his Bible, as to the 
Eunuch. But, whether it come at the boats, or 
whether it come at the Bible, whatever is good is 
God's ; and men may be thankful that the Giver 
of all good has peopled the whole earth and air 
and sky with thoughts of His glory, and filled 
the world with voices which call men near to 
Him. At the same time, it must be understood 
again that the initial motives are never meant to 
continue us far on the road to God. As a matter 
of fact, they never can continue us ; and if a man 
does not get higher ones, his religion must, and 
his morality may, come to a bitter end. The 
melancholy proof occurs to every one in a mo- 
ment, that those who inspire us with these almost 
Divine enthusiasms are, and have been, many 



292 THE WILL OF GOD 

of them, degraded men and women themselves. 
For if a man's motives to goodness are not higher 
than the enthusiasms of his own higher nature, 
the chances are that the appeals of his lower 
nature, in time, will either curb or degrade 
them. 

The true motive to holiness, then, is not to be 
caught from books. 

3. In the next place, some of us, perhaps, were 
induced to aim at a better life from prudential 
motives, or from fear. 

We had read in the Bible a very startling sen- 
tence — "Without holiness no man shall see the 
Lord." Now we wished to see God. And we 
found the Bible full of commands to keep God's 
law. So, with fear and trembling, we began to 
try to keep it. Its strictness was a continual 
stimulus to us. We were kept watching and 
praying. We lived in an atmosphere of fear, lest 
we should break it. No doubt this has done 
good — great good. Like the others, it was not 
a bad motive — only an imperfect one. But, like 
the others, it will have to be exchanged for a 
higher one, if true progress in holy living is to 
be made. 

4. Then some of us found another motive in 
gratitude. The great love of God in Christ had 
come home to us with a peculiar power. We felt 
the greatness of His sacrifice for us, of His for- 
giveness of us. And we would try to return His 
love. So we set our hearts with a gracious pur- 



THE WILL OF GOD 293 

pose towards God. Our life and conversation 
would be becoming the Gospel of Christ. We 
would do for His sake what we would never do for 
our own sake. But even a noble impulse like this 
has failed to fulfil our heart's desire, and even 
our generosity has left us little nearer God. 

5. And, lastly, there is this other thought which 
has sometimes helped us onward for a time — a 
feeling which comes over us at Communion times, 
at revival times, which Christian workers feel at all 
times : " Here are we surrounded by great privi- 
leges — singled out from the world for God's 
peculiar charge. God comes very close to us ; 
the very ground is holy oftentimes. What man- 
ner of persons ought we to be in all holy conver- 
sation and godliness? How different we ought 
to be from all the people around ! How much 
more separate from every appearance of evil! 
How softly we should walk, who bear the vessels 
of the Lord ! 

Now some of these motives are very beautiful. 
They are the gifts of God. Doubtless many have 
attained to a certain measure of holiness by em- 
ploying them. And they have at least awakened 
in us some longings after God. But they are all 
deficient, and hopelessly inadequate to carry on 
what sometimes they so hopefully begin. 

And they are deficient in these three ways : — 
1. They are unscriptural — rather, they do not 
convey the full scriptural truth. 



294 THE WILL OF GOD 

2. They are inadequate to produce more than 
a small degree of holiness. 

3. They never produce the true quality of 
holiness. 

If we have not yet had higher motives than 
these, then, it follows that our spiritual life is 
being laid down upon principles which can never 
in the nature of things yield the results we had 
hoped and waited for. 

We have been wondering why our growth in 
grace has been so small — so small, indeed, that 
sometimes it has almost seemed to cease. And 
without looking at books or doctrines, as we look 
into our hearts, we find one reason, at least, 
— ■ perhaps the great one — that our motive is 
incomplete. 

Now, the weakness of the old motive, apart 
from the error of it, consisted in this : in the first 
place it wanted authority ; in the second, it pro- 
posed no standard. As regards the first, there 
was no reason why one should strive to be better. 
It was left to one's own discretion. Our friend 
said it, or our favourite author, and the obliga- 
tion rose and fell with the nearness or remote- 
ness of their influence. And as regards the 
standard, our friend or our favourite author's 
favourite hero was but a poor model at the best, 
for only a most imperfect spiritual beauty can 
ever be copied from anything made of clay. 

Well, then, what is the right motive to holiness 
of life? We have been dealing with ordinary 



THE WILL OF GOD 295 

motives hitherto ; now we must come to extra- 
ordinary ones. Holiness is one of the most 
extraordinary things in life, and it demands the 
noblest motives, the noblest impulses, or none. 
Now we shall see how God has satisfied this 
demand of our nature for an extraordinary mo- 
tive to this extraordinary thing, holiness — satis- 
fied it so completely, that the soul, when it finds 
it out, need never feel unsatisfied again. God's 
motive to holiness is, "Be ye holy > for I am holy" 

It is a startling thing when the voice of God 
comes close to us and whispers, " Be ye holy;" 
but when the question returns from our lips, 
" Why should we be holy ? " it is a more solemn 
thing to get this answer, " For I am holy." This 
is God's motive to holiness — " For I am holy." Be 
ye holy: here is its authority — its Divine obliga- 
tion. For I am holy, here is its Divine motive. 

Be ye holy. Think of the greatness of the ob- 
ligation. Long ago, when we began the Chris- 
tian life, we heard a voice, u Be ye holy." Per- 
haps, as we have seen, it was an infectious voice, 
the voice of a friend. Perhaps it was an inspiring 
voice, the voice of poetry and literature. Perhaps 
it was a warning voice, the voice of the law. But 
it was not a commanding voice — the voice of 
God. And the reason was, perhaps, that we 
were not thinking of the voice : we were thinking 
of the holy. We had caught sight of a new and 
beautiful object — something which seemed full 
of promise, which was to consecrate even the 



296 THE WILL OF GOD 

common hours of our life. The religious world 
seemed bright to us then, and the books and the 
men were dear that would help us to reach out 
our hands to this. It was something new that 
had come into our life — this fascination of holi- 
ness. Had we been asked about the voice which 
said, " Be ye holy," we should indeed have said it 
was God's. But, in truth, it was only our own 
voice, which had caught some far-off echoes from 
our reading, or our thinking, or our friends. 
There was no authority in the voice, therefore, 
and it rested with our own poor wills whether we 
should grow in holiness or not. Sometimes our 
will was strong and true, and we were better men 
and women then than ever in our lives before; 
but there were intervals when we lost all we had 
gained, when we listened to another voice, " Be 
ye prosperous," or "Be ye happy," and then we 
lost all we had gained. 

But with the Divine obligation before us, it is 
no longer optional that we should be holy. We 
must be holy. . . . And then see how the motive 
to holiness is attached to the obligation to holiness 
— the motive for holiness : " For I am holy" The 
motive accounts for the obligation. God's one de- 
sire for the whole earth is that it should be holy — 
just because He is holy. And the best He can 
do with men is to make them like Himself. The 
whole earth is His, and he would have it all in 
harmony with Him. God has a right to demand 
that we should be holy — that every one should 



THE WILL OF GOD 297 

be holy, and everything just, because He is holy 
Himself. To take even the lowest ground, we 
allow no ornaments in our house that are not 
lovely and pleasant to the eye. We have no 
business to cumber God's earth with ourselves if 
we are not holy — no business to live in the same 
world with Him. We are an offence to God — 
discordant notes in the music of the universe. 

But God lays this high obligation upon us for 
our own sake. For this we were made. For 
this we were born in a Christian land. For this 
strange things have happened in our lives — 
strange pieces of discipline have disturbed its 
quiet flow, strange troubles, strange providences, 
strange chastenings. There is no other explana- 
tion of the mystery of our life than this, — that 
God would have us holy. At any cost God will 
have us holy. Whatever else we may be, this one 
thing we must be. This is the will of God, even 
your sanctification. It is not necessary that we 
should be prosperous or famous, or happy. But 
it is necessary that we should be holy; and the 
deepest moments of our life give us glimpses 
sometimes of a more tender reason still why God 
says, " Be ye holy " — for our own sakes : because 
it would be hell to be unholy. 

There is now only one thing wanting in our 
new motive to holiness. We have discovered the 
sources of its obligation far up in the counsels of 
God, and deep down in the weakness of our own 
nature. We have found holiness to be an abso- 



298 THE WILL OF GOD 

lutely necessary virtue — -to live without which is 
to contradict our Maker. But we have not yet 
looked at its quality. The thing we are to pursue 
so ardently — what is it? How are we to shape 
it to ourselves when we think of it? Is there any 
plain definition of it — any form which could be 
easily stated and easily followed? It may be very 
easily stated. It is for those who have tried it to 
say whether it be easily followed. Be ye holy, 
as He is holy. As He is holy, as He who 
hath called you is holy, so be ye holy. This is 
the form of holiness we are asked to aim at. This 
is the standard. God's commentary on the mo- 
tive "As He . . . soj^." Think for a moment 
the difference between these pronouns. He — Ye. 
He who hath called you — Jesus Christ. He who 
did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. 
He who when He was reviled, reviled not again, 
when He suffered, He threatened not. He who 
was without spot or blemish, in whom even His 
enemies found no fault. 

Ye> the fallen children of a fallen race. Ye } with 
■ hearts deceitful above all things, and desperately 
wicked. Ye are to become as He. The two pro- 
nouns are to approach one another. The cruci- 
fiers are to work their way up to the crucified. 
Ye are to become as He. There is a motive as 
high as the holiness of God. It makes us feel as 
if we had our life-work before us still. It seems 
all to begin as yet. We have scarcely begun even 
to be like God — for we began perhaps with no 



THE WILL OF GOD 299 

higher motive than to be like some one else — not 
like God at all. But the little betterness that we 
get from books ; the chance impulses that come 
from their other lives have never fulfilled in us 
the will of God — have never sanctified their 
hearts as ours — could never sanctify such hearts 
— make ye become as He. 

No doubt a great deal of human good is pos- 
sible to man before he touch the character of 
Christ. High human motives and human aims 
may make a noble human life. But they never 
make a holy life. A holy life is a life like Christ's. 
And, whatever may be got from the lower motives 
to a better life, one thing must necessarily be ab- 
sent from them all — the life like Christ's, or 
rather, the spirit like Christ's. For the life like 
Christ's can only come from Christ ; and the spirit 
of Christ can only be caught from Christ. 

Hence, therefore (in closing), we come at last 
to the profound meaning of another text which 
stands alone in the Word of God and forms the 
only true climax to such a subject as this. 

" Lo I come to do Thy will, O God," the author 
of the Hebrews quotes from David, and goes on 
to add, "By the which will we are sanctified." 
Christ came to do God's will, by the which will we 
are sanctified. This is the will of God, even your 
sanctification. But the writer of the Hebrews 
adds another lesson : " By the which will we are 
sanctified." How ? " Through the offering of the 
body of Jesus Christ once for all." Our sanctifi- 



300 THE WILL OF GOD 

cation is not in books, or in noble enthusiasm, or 
in personal struggles after a better life. It is in 
the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for 
all. Justification is through the blood of Jesus 
Christ once for all. Sanctification is through the 
body of Jesus Christ once for all. It is not a 
thing to be generated, but to be received. It is 
not to be generated in fragments of experience 
at one time and another — it is already complete 
in Christ. We have only to put on Christ. And 
though it may take a lifetime of experience to 
make it ours, the sanctification, whenever it come, 
can only come from Christ, and if we ever have 
sanctification it will only be because, and inas- 
much as we have Christ. Our sanctification is 
not what morality gives, not even what the Bible 
gives, not even what Christ gives, — it is what 
Christ lives. It is Christ Himself. 

The reason why we resort so much to lower 
impulses to a Christian life is imperfect union to 
Christ. We take our doctrines from the Bible 
and our assurance from Christ. But for want of 
the living bright reality of His presence in our 
hearts we search the world all round for im- 
pulses. We search religious books for impulses, 
and tracts and sermons, but in vain. They are 
not there. I am Alpha and Omega, the begin- 
ning and the end. Christ is all and in all. The 
beginning of all things is in the will of God — 
" by the which will.*' The end of all things is in 
sanctification through faith in Jesus Christ. " By 



THE WILL OF GOD 301 

the which will ye are sanctified." Between these 
two poles all spiritual life and Christian experience 
run. And no motive outside Christ can lead a 
man to Christ. If your motive to holiness is not 
as high as Christ it cannot make you rise to 
Christ. For water cannot rise above its level. 
" Beware, therefore, lest any man spoil you 
through philosophy and vain deceit, after the 
tradition of men, after the rudiments of the 
world, and not after Christ. For in Him dwell- 
eth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And 
ye are complete in Hint, which is the head of all 
principality and power" (2 Col. viii. 10). "Who 
of God is made unto us wisdom and righteous- 
ness, and sanctification, and redemption" (1 Cor. 
i. 30). (" As ye have therefore received the Lord 
Jesus, so walk ye in Hint") 



NUMBER XV 

How to Know the 
Will of God 

"If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doc- 
trine, whether it be of God. 11 — John vii. 1 7. 

THERE is an experience which becomes more 
and more familiar to every one who is try<- 
ing to follow Christ — a feeling of the growing 
loneliness of his Christian life. It comes from 
a sense of the peculiarly personal interest which 
Christ takes in him, which sometimes seems 
so strong as almost to make him feel that his 
life is being detached from all the other lives 
around him, that it is being drawn out of the 
crowd of humanity as if an unseen arm linked in 
his were taking him aside for a nearer intimacy 
and a deeper and more private fellowship. It is 
not, indeed, that the great family of God are to 
be left in the shade for him, or that he is in any 
way the favourite of heaven ; but the sanctifying 
and, in the truest sense, humbling realization that 
God makes Himself as real to each poor unit as if 
he were the whole ; so that even as in coming to 
Christ at first he felt himself the only lost, so now 



TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 303 

in staying with Christ he feels himself the only- 
found. And it is, perhaps, true that without any 
loss in the feeling of saintly communion with 
all those throughout the world who say " Our 
Father " with him in their prayers, the more he 
feels that Christ has all of him to Himself the 
more he feels that he has Christ all to himself. 
Christ has died for other men, but in a peculiar 
sense for him. God has a love for all the world, 
but a peculiar love for him. God has an interest 
in all the world, but a peculiar interest in him. 
This is always the instinct of a near fellowship, 
and it is true of the universal fellowship of God 
with His own people. 

But if there is one thing more than another 
which is more personal to the Christian — more 
singularly his than God's love or God's interest 
— one thing which is a finer symbol of God's 
love and interest, it is the knowledge of God's 
will — the private knowledge of God's will. 
And it is more personal, just inasmuch as it is 
more private. My private portion of God's love 
is only a private share in God's love — only a 
part — the same in quality and kind as all the 
rest of God's love, as all the others get from 
God. But God's will is a thing for myself. 
There is a will of God for me which is willed 
for no one else besides. It is not a share in the 
universal will, in the same sense as I have a 
share in the universal love. It is a particular 
will for me, different from the will He has for 



304 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 

any one else — a private will — a will which no 
one else knows about, which no one can know 
about, but me. 

To be sure, as we have seen before, God had 
likewise a universal will for me and every man. 
But this is more than that. In the Ten Com- 
mandments, in conscience, in the beatitudes of 
Christ, God tells all the world His will. There 
is no secret about this part, it is as universal as 
His love. It is the will on which the character 
of every man is to be formed and conformed to 
God's. 

But there is a will for career as well as for 
character. There is a will f or where — in what 
place, viz., in this town or another town — I am 
to become like God as well as that I am to be- 
come like God. There is a will for where I am 
to be, and what I am to be, and what I am to do 
to-morrow. There is a will for what scheme I 
am to take up, and what work I am to do for 
Christ, and what business arrangements to make, 
and what money to give away. This is God's 
private will for me, for every step I take, for 
the path of life along which He points my way, 
— God's will for my career. 

If I have God's will in my character, my life 
may become great and good. It may be useful 
and honourable, and even a monument of the 
sanctifying power of God. But it will only be 
a life. However great and pure it be, it can 
be no more than a life. And it ought to be a 



TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 305 

mission. There should be no such thing as a 
Christian life, each life should be a mission. 

God has a life-plan for every human life. In 
the eternal counsels of His will, when He arranged 
the destiny of every star, and every sand-grain 
and grass-blade, and each of those tiny insects 
which live but for an hour, the Creator had a 
thought for you and me. Our life was to be the 
slow unfolding of this thought, as the corn-stalk 
from the corn, or the flower from the gradually 
opening bud. It was a thought of what we were 
to be, of what we might become, of what He 
would have us do with our days and years, or 
influence with our lives. But we all had the ter- 
rible power to evade this thought, and shape our 
lives from another thought, from another will, if 
we chose. The bud could only become a flower, 
and the star revolve in the orbit God had fixed. 
But it was man's prerogative to choose his path, 
his duty to choose it in God. But the Divine 
right to choose at all has always seemed more to 
him than his duty to choose in God, so, for the 
most part, he has taken his \ikfrom God, and cut 
his career from himself. 

It comes to pass, therefore, that there are two 
great classes of people in the Christian world 
to-day. (1) Those who have God's will in their 
character ; (2) Those who have God's will like- 
wise in their career. The first are in the world 
to live. They have a life. The second are in 
the world to minister. They have a mission. 
20 



3o6 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 

Now those who belong to the first class, those 
who are simply living in the world and growing 
character, however finely they may be develop- 
ing their character, cannot understand too plainly 
that they are not fulfilling God's will. They are 
really outside a great part of God's will alto- 
gether. They understand the universal part, they 
are moulded by it, and their lives as lives are in 
some sense noble and true. But they miss the 
private part, the secret whispering of God in the 
ear, the constant message from earth to heaven. 
" Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? " They 
never have the secret joy of asking a question 
like this, the wonderful sense in asking it, of be- 
ing in the counsels of God, the overpowering 
thought that God has taken notice of you, and 
your question — that He will let you do some- 
thing, something peculiar, personal, private, which 
no one else has been given to do — this which 
gives life for God its true sublimity, and makes a 
perpetual sacrament of all its common things. 
Life to them is at the best a bare and selfish 
thing, for the truest springs of action are never 
moved at all, and the strangest thing in human 
history, the bounding of the career from step to 
step, from circumstance to circumstance, from 
tragedy to tragedy, is unexplained and unrelated, 
and hangs, a perpetual mystery, over life. 

The great reason possibly why so few have 
thought of taking God into their career is that 
so few have really taken God into their life. No 



TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 307 

one ever thinks of having God in his career, or 
need think, until his life is fully moulded into 
God's. And no one will succeed in knowing even 
what God in his career can mean till he know 
what it is to have God in the secret chambers of 
his heart. It requires a well-kept life to know the 
will of God, and none but the Christlike in char- 
acter can know the Christlike in career. 

It has happened, therefore, that the very fact 
of God's guidance in the individual life has been 
denied. It is said to give life an importance quite 
foreign to the Divine intention in making man. 
One life, it is argued, is of no more importance 
than any other life, and to talk of special provi- 
dences happening every hour of every day is to 
detract from the majesty and dignity of God, that, 
in fact, it reduces a religious life to a mere reli- 
gious caprice, and the thought that God's will is 
being done to a hallucination of the mind. 

And there is another side to the objection, 
which though less pronounced and definite, subtly 
dangerous still — that there does indeed seem to 
be some warrant in Scripture for getting to know 
the will of God; but that, in the first place, that 
probably means only on great occasions which 
come once or twice in a lifetime; and, in the 
second, that the whole subject is so obscure that, 
all things considered, a man had better walk by 
his own common sense, and leave such mysteries 
alone. 

But the Christian cannot allow the question to 



308 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 

be put off with poor evasions like these. Every 
day, indeed, and many times a day, the question 
rises in a hundred practical forms. " What is 
the will of God for me ? n What is the will of 
God for me to-day, just now, for the next step, 
for this arrangement and for that, and this amuse- 
ment, and this projected work for Christ? For 
all these he feels he must consult the will of God, 
and that God has a will for him in all such things, 
and that it must be possible somehow to know 
what that will is, is not only a matter of hope, 
but a point in his doctrine and creed. 

But in order to vindicate the reasonableness of 
such expectations as these, it may simply be 
affirmed as a matter of fact that there are a num- 
ber of instruments for finding out the will of God. 
One of them is a very great instrument, so far 
surpassing all the rest in accuracy that there may 
be said to be but one which has never been 
known to fail. The others are smaller and clum- 
sier, much less delicate, indeed, and often fail. 
They often fail to come within sight of the will of 
God at all, and are so far astray at other times as 
to mistake some other thing for it. Still they 
are instruments, and notwithstanding their defects, 
have a value by themselves, and when the greater 
instrument employs their humbler powers to sec- 
ond its attempts, immediately become as keen 
and as unerring as itself. 

The most important of these minor instruments 
is Reason, and although it is a minor instrument, 



TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 309 

it is great enough in many a case to reveal the 
secret will of God. God is taking your life and 
character through a certain process, for example. 
He is running your career along a certain chain of 
events. And sometimes the light which He is 
showing you stops, and you have to pick your 
way for a few steps by the dimmer light of 
thought. But it is God's will for you then to use 
this thought, and to elevate it through regions of 
consecration, into faith, and to walk by this light 
till the clearer beam from His will comes back 
again. 

Another of these instruments is experience. 
There are many paths in life which we all tread 
more than once. God's light was by us when we 
walked them first, and lit a beacon here and there 
along the way. But the next time He sent 
our lines along that path He knew the side- 
lights should be burning still, and let us walk 
alone. 

And then there is circumstance. God closes 
things in around us till our alternatives are all 
reduced to one. That one, if we must act, is 
probably the will of God just then. 

And then there is the advice of others — an 
important element at least — and the welfare of 
others, and the example to others, and the many 
other facts and principles which make up the 
moral man, which, if not strong enough always 
to discover what God's will is, are not too feeble 
oftentimes to determine what it is not. 



310 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 

Even the best of these instruments, however, 
has but little power in its own hands. The ulti- 
mate appeal is always to the one great Instrument, 
which uses them in turn as it requires, and which 
supplements their discoveries, or even supplants 
them if it choose by its own superior light, and 
might, and right. It is like some great glass that 
can sweep the skies in the darkest night, and trace 
the motions of the furthest stars, while all the rest 
can but see a faint uncertain light piercing for 
a moment here and there the clouds which lie 
between. 

And this great instrument for finding out God's 
will, this instrument which can penetrate where 
reason cannot go, where observation has not been 
before, and memory is helpless, and the guiding 
hand of circumstance has failed, has a name 
which is seldom associated with any end so great, 
a name which every child may understand, even 
as the stupendous instrument itself with all its 
mighty powers is sometimes moved by infant 
hands when others have tried in vain. 

The name of the instrument is obedience. Obe- 
dience, as it is sometimes expressed, is the organ 
of spiritual knowledge. As the eye is the organ 
of physical sight ; the mind, of intellectual sight ; 
so the organ of spiritual vision is this strange 
power, obedience. 

This is one of the great discoveries the Bible 
has made to the world. It is purely a Bible 
thought. Philosophy never conceived a truth so 



TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 311 

simple and yet so sublime. And, although it 
was known in Old Testament times, and ex- 
pressed in Old Testament books, it was reserved 
for Jesus Christ to make the full discovery to 
the world, and add to His teaching another of 
the profoundest truths which have come from 
heaven to earth — that the mysteries of the 
Father's will are hid in this word " obey." 

The circumstances in which Christ made the 
great discovery to the world are known to every 
one. 

The Feast of Tabernacles was in progress in 
Jerusalem when Jesus entered the temple to 
teach. A circle of Jews were gathered round 
Him who seem to have been spell-bound with the 
extraordinary wisdom of His words. He made 
no pretension to be a scholar. He was no grad- 
uate of the Rabbinical schools. He had no ac- 
cess to the sacred literature of the people. Yet 
here was this stranger from Nazareth confound- 
ing the wisest heads in Jerusalem, and unfolding 
with calm and effortless skill such truths as even 
these temple walls had never heard before. 
Then " the Jews marvelled, saying, ' How know- 
eth this man letters, never having learned ?'" 
What organ of spiritual knowledge can He have, 
never having learned ? Never having learned — 
they did not know that Christ had learned. 
They did not know the school at Nazareth whose 
teacher was in heaven — whose schoolroom was a 
carpenter's shop — the lesson, the Father's will. 



312 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 

They knew not that hidden truths could come 
from God, or wisdom from above. 

What came to them was gathered from human 
books, or caught from human lips. They knew 
no organ save the mind ; no instrument of know- 
ing the things of heaven but that by which they 
learned in the schools. But Jesus pointed to a 
spiritual world which lay still far beyond, and 
tells them of the spiritual eye which reads its 
profounder secrets and reveals the mysteries of 
God. "My doctrine is not Mine," He says, " but 
His that sent Me " ; and " My judgment is just," 
as He taught before, " because I seek not Mine 
own will, but the will of the Father which hath 
sent Me." And then, lest men should think this 
great experience was never meant for them, He 
applies His principles to every human mind 
which seeks to know God's will. " If any man 
will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, 
whether it be of God." 

The word doctrine here is not to be taken in 
our sense of the word doctrine. It is not the 
doctrine of theology. " Any man " is to know if 
he will do His will. But it is God's teaching — 
God's mind. If any man will do His will, he 
shall know God's mind; he shall know God's 
teaching and God's will. 

In this sense, or indeed in the literal sense, 
from the first look at these words it appears 
almost as if a contradiction were involved. To 
know God's will, it is as much as to say, Do God's 



TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 313 

will. But how are we to do God's will until we 
know it? To know it; that is the very dilemma 
we are in. And it seems no way out of it to say, 
Do it and you shall know it. We want to know 
it, in order to do it; and now we are told to do 
it, in order to know it ! If any man do, he shall 
know. 

But that is not the meaning of the words. 
That is not even the words themselves. It is not, 
If any man do, he shall know; but if any man 
will do. And the whole sense of the passage 
turns upon that word wilL It means, "If any 
man is willing to do, he shall know." He does 
not need to do His will in order to know, he only 
need be willing to do it. For " will " is not at 
all the sign of the future tense as it looks. It is 
not connected with the word do at all, but a sep- 
arate verb altogether, meaning " is willing," or 
" wills." If any man wills, or if any man is will- 
ing, to do, he shall know. 

Now notice the difference this makes in the 
problem. Before, it looked as if the doing were 
to come first and then the knowing His will ; but 
now another element is thrown in at the very be- 
ginning. The being willing comes first and then 
the knowing; and thereafter the doing may fol- 
low — the doing, that is to say, if the will has 
been sufficiently clear to proceed. 

The whole stress of the passage therefore turns 
on this word will. And Christ's answer to the 
question, How to know the will of God ? may be 



314 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 

simply stated thus : " If any man is willing to do 
God's will he shall know," or, in plainer language 
still, " If any man is sincerely trying to do God's 
will, he shall know." 

The connection of all this with obedience is 
just that being willing is the highest form of 
obedience. It is the spirit and essence of obedi- 
ence. There is an obedience in the world which 
is no obedience, because the act of obedience is 
there, but the spirit of submission is not. 

" A certain man," we read in the Bible, " had 
two sons; and he came to the first, and said, 
1 Son, go work to-day in my vineyard.' He an- 
swered, i I will not' : but afterward he repented and 
went. And he came to the second, and said like- 
wise. And he answered, ' I go, sir ' : and went not. 
Whether of them twain did the will of his father?" 
Obedience here comes out in its true colours as a 
thing in the will. And if any man have an obey- 
ing will, a truly single and submissive will, he 
shall know of the teaching, or of the leading, 
whether it be of God. 

If we were to carry out this principle into a 
practical case, it might be found to work in some 
such way as this. To-morrow, let us say, there is 
some difficulty before us in our path. It lies 
across the very threshold of our life, and we can- 
not begin the working week without, at least, 
some notice that it is there. It may be some 
trifling item of business life, over which unac- 
countable suspicions have begun to gather of 



TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 315 

late, and force themselves in spite of everything 
into thought and conscience, and even into prayer. 
Or, it may be, some change of circumstance is 
opening up, and alternatives appearing, and de- 
manding choice of one. Perhaps it is some prac- 
tice in our life, which the clearing of the spiritual 
atmosphere and increasing light from God is 
hinting to be wrong, while reason cannot coin- 
cide exactly and condemn. At all events there 
is something on the mind — something to do, 
to suffer, to renounce — and these are alterna- 
tive on the mind to distinguish, to choose from, 
to reject. Suppose, indeed, we made this case a 
personal as well as an illustrative thing, and in 
view of the solemn ordinance to which we are 
shortly called, we ran the lines of our self-exam- 
ination along it as we proceed — the question 
rises, How are we to separate God's light on the 
point from our own, disentangle our thoughts on 
the point from His, and be sure we are following 
His will, not the reflected image of ours? 

The first process towards this discovery natur- 
ally would be one of outlook. Naturally we would 
set to work by collecting all the possible materials 
for decision from every point of the compass, 
balancing the one consequence against the other, 
then summing up the points in favour of each by 
itself, until we chose the one which emerged at 
last with most of reason on its side. But this 
would only be the natural man's way out of the 
dilemma. The spiritual man would go about it 



316 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 

in another way. This way, he would argue, has 
no religion in it at all, except perhaps the ac- 
knowledgment that reason is divine ; and though 
it might be quite possible and even probable that 
the light should come to him through the medium 
of reason, yet he would reach his conclusion, and 
likely enough a different conclusion, quite from 
another side. 

And his conclusion would likewise be a better 
and sounder conclusion, for the insight of the 
non-religious method would be impaired, and the 
real organ of knowing God's will so out of order 
from disuse, that even reason would be biassed in 
its choice. A heart not quite subdued to God is 
an imperfect element, in which His will can never 
live; and the intellect which belongs to such a 
heart is an imperfect instrument and cannot find 
God's will unerringly — for God's will is found in 
regions which obedience only can explore. 

Accordingly, he would go to work from the 
opposite side from the first. He would begin not 
in out-look, but in in-look. He would not give 
his mind to observation. He would devote his 
soul to self-examination, to self-examination of the 
most solemn and searching kind. For this prin- 
ciple of Christ is no concession to an easy life, or 
a careless method of rounding a difficult point. 
It is a summons rather to learn the highest and 
most sacred thing in Heaven, by bracing the heart 
to the loftiest and severest sacrifice on earth — 
the bending of an unwilling human will till it 



TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 317 

breaks in the will of God. It means that the heart 
must be watched with a jealous care, and most 
solemnly kept for God. It means that the hidden 
desires must be taken out one by one and regen- 
erated by Christ — that the faintest inclination of 
the soul when touched by the spirit of God, be 
prepared to assume the strength of will and act 
at any cost. It means that nothing in life should 
be dreaded so much as that the soul should ever 
lose its sensitiveness to God; that God should 
ever speak and find the ear just dull enough to 
miss what He has said; that God should have 
some active will for some human will to do, and 
our heart not the first in the world to be ready to 
obey. 

When we have attained to this by meditation, 
by self-examination, by commemoration, and by 
the Holy Spirit's power, we may be ready to make 
it our daily prayer, that we may know God's will; 
and when the heart is prepared like this, and the 
wayward will is drilled in sacrifice and patience to 
surrender all to God, God's will may come out 
in our career at every turning of our life, and be 
ours not only in sacramental aspiration but in act. 

To search for God's will with such an instru- 
ment is scarce to search at all. God's will lies 
transparently in view at every winding of the 
path ; and if perplexity sometimes comes, in such 
way as has been supposed the mind will gather 
the phenomena into the field of vision, as care- 
fully, as fully, as laboriously, as if no light would 



3i8 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 

come at all, and then stand still and wait till the 
wonderful discerning faculty of the soul, that eye 
which beams in the undivided heart and looks 
right out to God from every willing mind fixes 
its gaze on one far distant spot, one spot perhaps 
which is dark to all the world besides, where all 
the lights are focussed in God's will. 

How this finite and this infinite are brought to 
touch, how this invisible will of God is brought 
to the temporal heart must even remain unknown. 
The mysterious meeting-place in the prepared and 
willing heart between the human and divine — 
where, precisely, the will is finally moved into 
line with God's — of these things knoweth no man 
save only the Spirit of God. 

The wind bloweth where it listeth. " We hear 
the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh 
or whither it goeth." When every passion is 
annihilated, and no thought moves in the mind, 
and all the faculties are still and waiting for God, 
the spiritual eye may trace, perhaps, some delicate 
motion in the soul, some thought which stirs like 
a leaf in the unseen air and tells that God is there. 
It is not the stillness, nor the unseen breath, nor 
the thought that only stirred, but these three 
mysteries in one which reveal God's will to me. 
God's light it is true does not supersede, but 
illuminate our thoughts. Only when God sends 
an angel to trouble the pool let us have faith for 
the angel's hand, and believe that some power of 
Heaven has stirred the waters in our soul. 



TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 319 

Let us but get our hearts in position for know- 
ing the will of God — only, let us be willing to 
know God's will in our hearts that we may do 
God's will in our lives, and we shall raise no 
questions as to how this will may come and feel 
no fears in case the heavenly light should go. 

But let it be remembered, as already said, that 
it requires a well-kept life to will to do this will. 
It requires a well-kept life to do the will of God, 
and even a better kept life to will to do His will. 
To be willing is a rarer grace than to be doing 
the will of God. For he who is willing may some- 
times have nothing to do, and must only be will- 
ing to wait: and it is easier far to be doing God's 
will than to be willing to have nothing to do — it 
is easier far to be working for Christ than it is to be 
willing to cease. No, there is nothing rarer in the 
world to-day than the truly willing soul, and there 
is nothing more worth coveting than the will to 
will God's will. There is no grander possession 
for any Christian life than the transparently simple 
mechanism of a sincerely obeying heart. And if 
we could keep the machinery clear, there would 
be lives in thousands doing God's will on earth 
even as it is done in Heaven. There would be 
God in many a man's career whose soul is allowed 
to drift — a useless thing to God and the world — 
with every changing wind of life, and many a 
noble Christian character rescued from wasting 
all its virtues on itself and saved for work for 
Christ. 



320 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 

And when the time of trial would come, and 
all in earth and heaven was dark and even God's 
love seemed dim : what is there ever left to cling 
to but this will of the willing heart, a God-given, 
God-ward bending will, which says amidst the 
most solemn and perplexing vicissitudes of life, 

" Father, I know that all my life, 
Is portioned out by Thee, 
And the changes that are sure to come 

I do not fear to see : 
But I ask Thee for a present mind, 
Intent on pleasing Thee." 



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